BOOK VI.


CHAPTER I.

Etchings of Hyde Park in the month of June, which, if this history
escapes those villains the trunk-makers, may be of inestimable value
to unborn antiquarians.--Characters, long absent, reappear and give
some account of themselves.

Five years have passed away since this history opened. It is the month
of June once more,--June, which clothes our London in all its glory,
fills its languid ballrooms with living flowers, and its stony causeways
with human butterflies. It is about the hour of six P.M. The lounge in
Hyde Park is crowded; along the road that skirts the Serpentine crawl the
carriages one after the other; congregate by the rails the lazy lookers-
on,--lazy in attitude, but with active eyes, and tongues sharpened on the
whetstone of scandal,--the Scaligers of club windows airing their
vocabulary in the Park. Slowly saunter on foot idlers of all degrees in
the hierarchy of London idlesse: dandies of established-fame; youthful
tyros in their first season. Yonder in the Ride, forms less inanimate
seem condemned to active exercise; young ladies doing penance in a
canter; old beaux at hard labour in a trot. Sometimes, by a more
thoughtful brow, a still brisker pace, you recognize a busy member of
the Imperial Parliament, who, advised by physicians to be as much on
horseback as possible, snatches an hour or so in the interval between the
close of his Committee and the interest of the Debate, and shirks the
opening speech of a well-known bore. Among such truant lawgivers (grief
it is to say it) may be seen that once model member, Sir Gregory
Stollhead. Grim dyspepsia seizing on him at last, "relaxation from his