defeat in Bevisham: the day was not without fruit in time to come for him
whom his commiserating admirers of the non-voting sex all round the
borough called the poor dear commander. Beauchamp's holiday out of
England had incited Dr. Shrapnel to break a positive restriction put upon
him by Jenny Denham, and actively pursue the canvass and the harangue in
person; by which conduct, as Jenny had foreseen, many temperate electors
were alienated from Commander Beauchamp, though no doubt the Radicals
were made compact: for they may be the skirmishing faction--poor
scattered fragments, none of them sufficiently downright for the other;
each outstripping each; rudimentary emperors, elementary prophets,
inspired physicians, nostrum-devouring patients, whatsoever you will;
and still here and there a man shall arise to march them in close
columns, if they can but trust him; in perfect subordination, a model
even for Tories while they keep shoulder to shoulder. And to behold such
a disciplined body is intoxicating to the eye of a leader accustomed to
count ahead upon vapourish abstractions, and therefore predisposed to add
a couple of noughts to every tangible figure in his grasp. Thus will a
realized fifty become five hundred or five thousand to him: the very
sense of number is instinct with multiplication in his mind; and those
years far on in advance, which he has been looking to with some fatigue
to the optics, will suddenly and rollickingly roll up to him at the
shutting of his eyes in a temporary fit of gratification. So, by looking
and by not looking, he achieves his phantom victory--embraces his cloud.

Dr. Shrapnel conceived that the day was to be a Radical success; and he,
a citizen aged and exercised in reverses, so rounded by the habit of them
indeed as to tumble and recover himself on the wind of the blow that
struck him, was, it must be acknowledged, staggered and cast down when he
saw Beauchamp drop, knowing full well his regiment had polled to a man.
Radicals poll early; they would poll at cockcrow if they might; they