vocabulary for the strongest epithets to apply to those irritating nouns-
substantive, his bile had got the better of his understanding, and he
became fuddled, as it were, by his own eloquence. Thus, though as
innocent of Jacobinical designs as he was incapable of setting the Thames
on fire, you would have guessed him, by his speeches, to be one of the
most determined incendiaries that ever applied a match to the combustible
materials of a contested election; while, being by no means accustomed to
respect his adversaries, he could not have treated the Earl of Lansmere
with less ceremony if his Lordship had been a Frenchman. He usually
designated that respectable nobleman, who was still in the prime of life,
by the title of "Old Pompous;" and the mayor, who was never seen abroad
but in top-boots, and the solicitor, who was of a large build, received
from his irreverent wit the joint sobriquet of "Tops and Bottoms"! Hence
the election had now become, as I said before, a personal matter with my
Lord, and, indeed, with the great heads of the Lansmere interest. The
earl seemed to consider his very coronet at stake in the question. "The
Man from Baker Street," with his preternatural audacity, appeared to him
a being ominous and awful--not so much to be regarded with resentment as
with superstitious terror. He felt as felt the dignified Montezuma, when
that ruffianly Cortez, with his handful of Spanish rapscallions, bearded
him in his own capital, and in the midst of his Mexican splendour. The
gods were menaced if man could be so insolent! wherefore, said my Lord
tremulously, "The Constitution is gone if the Man from Baker Street comes
in for Lansmere!"

But in the absence of Audley Egerton, the election looked extremely ugly,
and Captain Dashmore gained ground hourly, when the Lansmere solicitor
happily bethought him of a notable proxy for the missing candidate. The
Squire of Hazeldean, with his young wife, had been invited by the earl in
honour of Audley; and in the squire the solicitor beheld the only mortal