iron expression of his face altered, that the drooping hand was
raised, and that the suppressed, yet powerful, voice began to expand
and vary in its volume. He had then entered upon a new department of
his subject. The question was connected with the English
constitution, and Wolfe was now preparing to put forth, in long and
blackened array, the alleged evils of an aristocratical form of
government. Then it was as if the bile and bitterness of years were
poured forth in a terrible and stormy wrath,--then his action became
vehement, and his eye flashed forth unutterable fire: his voice,
solemn, swelling, and increasing with each tone in its height and
depth, filled, as with something palpable and perceptible, the shaking
walls. The listeners,--a various and unconnected group, bound by no
tie of faith or of party, many attracted by curiosity, many by the
hope of ridicule, some abhorring the tenets expressed, and nearly all
disapproving their principles or doubting their wisdom,--the
listeners, certainly not a group previously formed or moulded into
enthusiasm, became rapt and earnest; their very breath forsook them.

Linden had never before that night heard a public speaker; but he was
of a thoughtful and rather calculating mind, and his early habits of
decision, and the premature cultivation of his intellect, rendered him
little susceptible, in general, to the impressions of the vulgar:
nevertheless, in spite of himself, he was hurried away by the stream,
and found that the force and rapidity of the speaker did not allow him
even time for the dissent and disapprobation which his republican
maxims and fiery denunciations perpetually excited in a mind
aristocratic both by creed and education. At length after a
peroration of impetuous and magnificent invective, the orator ceased.

In the midst of the applause that followed, Clarence left the