politics, your talk leaves me in stolid amaze that you do not take to
your heels, where honour can only be saved by flight."

"Pooh! my dear Chillingly, we cannot run away from the age in which we
live: we must accept its conditions and make the best of them; and if
the House of Commons be nothing else, it is a famous debating society
and a capital club. Think over it. I must leave you now. I am going
to see a picture at the Exhibition which has been most truculently
criticised in 'The Londoner,' but which I am assured, on good
authority, is a work of remarkable merit. I can't bear to see a man
snarled and sneered down, no doubt by jealous rivals, who have their
influence in journals, so I shall judge of the picture for myself. If
it be really as good as I am told, I shall talk about it to everybody
I meet; and in matters of art I fancy my word goes for something.
Study art, my dear Kenelm. No gentleman's education is complete if he
does n't know a good picture from a bad one. After the Exhibition I
shall just have time for a canter round the Park before the debate of
the session, which begins to-night."

With a light step the young man quitted the room, humming an air from
the "Figaro" as he descended the stairs. From the window Kenelm
watched him swinging himself with careless grace into his saddle and
riding briskly down the street,--in form and face and bearing a very
model of young, high-born, high-bred manhood. "The Venetians,"
muttered Kenelm, "decapitated Marino Faliero for conspiring against
his own order,--the nobles. The Venetians loved their institutions,
and had faith in them. Is there such love and such faith among the
English?"

As he thus soliloquized he heard a shrilling sort of squeak; and a