was a hospitable, courteous man, much respected and liked by the
neighbouring gentry, so the hostile candidate had always interlarded his
speeches with profuse compliments to his Lordship's high character, and
civil expressions as to his Lordship's candidate. But, thanks to
successive elections, one of these two families had come to an end, and
its actual representative was now residing within the Rules of the Bench;
the head of the other family was the sitting member, and, by an amicable
agreement with the Lansinere interest, he remained as neutral as it is in
the power of any sitting member to be amidst the passions of an
intractable committee. Accordingly it had been hoped that Egerton would
come in without opposition, when, the very day on which he had abruptly
left the place, a handbill, signed "Haverill Dashmore, Captain R. N.,
Baker Street, Portman Square," announced, in very spirited language, the
intention of that gentleman "to emancipate the borough from the
unconstitutional domination of an oligarchical faction, not with a view
to his own political aggrandizement,--indeed at great personal
inconvenience,--but actuated solely by abhorrence to tyranny, and
patriotic passion for the purity of election."

This announcement was followed, within two hours, by the arrival of
Captain Dashmore himself, in a carriage and four, covered with yellow
favours, and filled, inside and out, with harumscarum-looking friends,
who had come down with him to share the canvass and partake the fun.

Captain Dashmore was a thorough sailor, who had, however, conceived a
disgust to the profession from the date in which a minister's nephew had
been appointed to the command of a ship to which the captain considered
himself unquestionably entitled. It is just to the minister to add that
Captain Dashmore had shown as little regard for orders from a distance as
had immortalized Nelson himself; but then the disobedience had not