them.'

'Ah! now for Rigby's combination,' said Lord Eskdale.

'The only thing that can save this country,' said Rigby, 'is a coalition
on a sliding scale.'

'You had better buy up the Birmingham Union and the other bodies,' said
Lord Monmouth; 'I believe it might all be done for two or three hundred
thousand pounds; and the newspapers too. Pitt would have settled this
business long ago.'

'Well, at any rate, we are in,' said Rigby, 'and we must do something.'

'I should like to see Grey's list of new peers,' said Lord Eskdale. 'They
say there are several members of our club in it.'

'And the claims to the honour are so opposite,' said Lucian Gay; 'one, on
account of his large estate; another, because he has none; one, because he
has a well-grown family to perpetuate the title; another, because he has
no heir, and no power of ever obtaining one.'

'I wonder how he will form his cabinet,' said Lord Monmouth; 'the old
story won't do.'

'I hear that Baring is to be one of the new cards; they say it will please
the city,' said Lord Eskdale. 'I suppose they will pick out of hedge and
ditch everything that has ever had the semblance of liberalism.'

'Affairs in my time were never so complicated,' said Mr. Ormsby.