the whole. All the maidservants admired him; and you felt, in looking at
him, that it was a pity our army should lose so good a grenadier.

Lord Erpingham was a Whig of the old school: he thought the Tory boroughs
ought to be thrown open. He was generally considered a sensible man. He
had read Blackstone, Montesquieu, Cowper's Poems, and _The Rambler_; and
he was always heard with great attention in the House of Lords. In his
moral character he was a bon Vivant, as far as wine is concerned; for
choice _eating_ he cared nothing. He was good-natured, but close; brave
enough to fight a duel, if necessary; and religious enough to go to church
once a week--in the country.

So far Lord Erpingham might seem modelled from one of Sir Walter's heroes:
we must reverse the medal, and show the points in which he differed from
those patterns of propriety.

Like the generality of his class, he was peculiarly loose in his notions
of women, though not ardent in pursuit of them. His amours had been among
opera-dancers, "because," as he was wont to say, "there was no d--d bore
with _them._" Lord Erpingham was always considered a high-minded man.
People chose him as an umpire in quarrels; and told a story (which was not
true) of his having held some state office for a whole year, and insisted
on returning the emoluments.

Such was Robert Earl of Erpingham. During dinner, at which he displayed,
to his mother's great delight, a most excellent appetite, he listened, as
well as he might, considering the more legitimate occupation of the time
and season, to Lady Erpingham's recitals of county history; her long
answers to his brief inquiries whether old friends were dead and young
ones married; and his countenance brightened up to an expression of