would have buried the martyr at their common charges--and proceeded
to inquire after the widow and son. Joseph Mutimer, already one- or
two-and-twenty, was in no need of help; he and his mother, naturally
prejudiced against the thriving uncle, declared themselves satisfied
with their lot, and desired no further connection with a relative
who was practically a stranger to them.

So Richard went on his way and heaped up riches. When already
middle-aged he took to himself a wife, his choice being marked with
characteristic prudence. The woman he wedded was turned thirty, had
no money, and few personal charms, but was a lady. Richard was fully
able to appreciate education and refinement; to judge from the
course of his later life, one would have said that he had sought
money only as a means, the end he really aimed at being the
satisfaction of instincts which could only have full play in a
higher social sphere. No doubt the truth was that success sweetened
his character, and developed, as is so often the case, those
possibilities of his better nature which a fruitless struggle would
have kept in the germ or altogether crushed. His excellent wife
influenced him profoundly; at her death the work was continued by
the daughter she left him. The defects of his early education could
not of course be repaired, but it is never too late for a man to go
to school to the virtues which civilise. Remaining the sturdiest of
Conservatives, he bowed in sincere humility to those very claims
which the Radical most angrily disallows: birth, hereditary station,
recognised gentility--these things made the strongest demand upon
his reverence. Such an attitude was a testimony to his own capacity
for culture, since he knew not the meaning of vulgar adulation, and
did in truth perceive the beauty of those qualities to which the
uneducated Iconoclast is wholly blind. It was a joyous day for him