at the House, speaking seldom, not at great length nor with much
preparation, but with power and fire, originality and genius; so that
he was not only effective as an orator, but combining with eloquence
advantages of birth, person, station, the reputation of patriotic
independence, and genial attributes of character, he was an authority
of weight in the scales of party.

This gentleman, at the age of forty, married the dowerless daughter of a
poor but distinguished naval officer, of noble family, first cousin to
the Duke of Alton.

He settled on her a suitable jointure, but declined to tie up any portion
of his property for the benefit of children by the marriage. He declared
that so much of his fortune was invested either in mines, the produce of
which was extremely fluctuating, or in various funds, over rapid
transfers in which it was his amusement and his interest to have control,
unchecked by reference to trustees, that entails and settlements on
children were an inconvenience he declined to incur.

Besides, he held notions of his own as to the wisdom of keeping children
dependent on their father. "What numbers of young men," said he, "are
ruined in character and in fortune by knowing that when their father dies
they are certain of the same provision, no matter how they displease him;
and in the meanwhile forestalling that provision by recourse to usurers."
These arguments might not have prevailed over the bride's father a year
or two later, when, by the death of intervening kinsmen, he became Duke
of Alton; but in his then circumstances the marriage itself was so much
beyond the expectations which the portionless daughter of a sea-captain
has the right to form that Mr. Vane had it all his own way, and he
remained absolute master of his whole fortune, save of that part of his