experience,--and saying to each other with a shrug of the shoulders,
'Bismillah! it must be so; the country will have it, even though it
sends the country to the dogs.' I don't feel sure that the country
will not go there the sooner, if you can only strengthen the
Conservative element enough to set it up in office, with the certainty
of knocking it down again. Alas! I am too dispassionate a looker-on
to be fit for a partisan: would I were not! Address yourself to my
cousin Gordon."

"Ay, Chillingly Gordon is a coming man, and has all the earnestness
you find absent in party and in yourself."

"You call him earnest?"

"Thoroughly, in the pursuit of one object,--the advancement of
Chillingly Gordon. If he get into the House of Commons, and succeed
there, I hope he will never become my leader; for if he thought
Christianity in the way of his promotion, he would bring in a bill for
its abolition."

"In that case would he still be your leader?"

"My dear Kenelm, you don't know what is the spirit of party, and how
easily it makes excuses for any act of its leader. Of course, if
Gordon brought in a bill for the abolition of Christianity, it would
be on the plea that the abolition was good for the Christians, and his
followers would cheer that enlightened sentiment."

"Ah," said Kenelm, with a sigh, "I own myself the dullest of
blockheads; for instead of tempting me into the field of party