placid lake of the plains, fed by springs and no confluents. For such
good reasons, Mr. Timothy rejoiced in the happy circumstances which had
expelled him from the shores of his native isle to find a refuge and a
vocation in Manchester at a period when an orator happened to be in
request because dozens were wanted. That centre of convulsions and
source of streams possessed the statistical orator, the reasoning orator,
and the inspired; with others of quality; and yet it had need of an ever-
ready spontaneous imperturbable speaker, whose bubbling generalizations
and ability to beat the drum humorous could swing halls of meeting from
the grasp of an enemy, and then ascend on incalescent adjectives to the
popular idea of the sublime. He was the artistic orator of Corn Law
Repeal--the Manchester flood, before which time Whigs were, since which
they have walked like spectral antediluvians, or floated as dead canine
bodies that are sucked away on the ebb of tides and flung back on the
flow, ignorant whether they be progressive or retrograde. Timothy Turbot
assisted in that vast effort. It should have elevated him beyond the
editorship of a country newspaper. Why it did not do so his antagonists
pretended to know, and his friends would smile to hear. The report was
that he worshipped the nymph Whisky.

Timothy's article had plucked Beauchamp out of bed; Beauchamp's card in
return did the same for him.

'Commander Beauchamp? I am heartily glad to make your acquaintance,
sir; I've been absent, at work, on the big business we have in common,
I rejoice to say, and am behind my fellow townsmen in this pleasure and
lucky I slept here in my room above, where I don't often sleep, for the
row of the machinery--it 's like a steamer that won't go, though it's
always starting ye,' Mr. Timothy said in a single breath, upon entering
the back office of the Gazette, like unto those accomplished violinists