'He is half way by this time,' said Tadpole; 'send an extract from a
private letter to the _Standard_, dated Augsburg, and say he will be here
in four days.'

At last he came; the great man in a great position, summoned from Rome to
govern England. The very day that he arrived he had his audience with the
King.

It was two days after this audience; the town, though November, in a state
of excitement; clubs crowded, not only morning rooms, but halls and
staircases swarming with members eager to give and to receive rumours
equally vain; streets lined with cabs and chariots, grooms and horses; it
was two days after this audience that Mr. Ormsby, celebrated for his
political dinners, gave one to a numerous party. Indeed his saloons to-
day, during the half-hour of gathering which precedes dinner, offered in
the various groups, the anxious countenances, the inquiring voices, and
the mysterious whispers, rather the character of an Exchange or Bourse
than the tone of a festive society.

Here might be marked a murmuring knot of greyheaded privy-councillors, who
had held fat offices under Perceval and Liverpool, and who looked back to
the Reform Act as to a hideous dream; there some middle-aged aspirants
might be observed who had lost their seats in the convulsion, but who
flattered themselves they had done something for the party in the
interval, by spending nothing except their breath in fighting hopeless
boroughs, and occasionally publishing a pamphlet, which really produced
less effect than chalking the walls. Light as air, and proud as a young
peacock, tripped on his toes a young Tory, who had contrived to keep his
seat in a Parliament where he had done nothing, but who thought an Under-