been at war, every moment, with each principle of Trevanion's
statesmanship, and fretted each fibre of his moral constitution. The
aristocratic combinations which his alliance with the Castleton interest
had brought to his aid served perhaps to fortify his position in the
Cabinet; yet aristocratic combinations were of small avail against what
seemed the atmospherical epidemic of the age. I could see how his
situation had preyed on his mind when I read a paragraph in the
newspapers, "that it was reported, on good authority, that Mr. Trevanion
had tendered his resignation, but had been prevailed upon to withdraw
it, as his retirement at that moment would break up the government."
Some months afterwards came another paragraph, to the effect "that Mr.
Trevanion was taken suddenly ill, and that it was feared his illness was
of a nature to preclude his resuming his official labors." Then
Parliament broke up. Before it met again, Mr. Trevanion was gazetted as
Earl of Ulverstone,--a title that had been once in his family,--and had
left the Administration, unable to encounter the fatigues of office. To
an ordinary man the elevation to an earldom, passing over the lesser
honors in the peerage, would have seemed no mean close to a political
career; but I felt what profound despair of striving against
circumstance for utility--what entanglements with his colleagues, whom
he could neither conscientiously support, nor, according to his high
old-fashioned notions of party honor and etiquette, energetically
oppose--had driven him to abandon that stormy scene in which his
existence had been passed. The House of Lords, to that active
intellect, was as the retirement of some warrior of old into the
cloisters of a convent. The gazette that chronicled the earldom of
Ulverstone was the proclamation that Albert Trevanion lived no more for
the world of public men. And, indeed, from that date his career
vanished out of sight. Trevanion died,--the Earl of Ulverstone made no
sign.