Lucret.

They were not halcyon days in England that succeeded the termination of the long struggle for liberty and existence, which, during more than twenty years, had taxed to the uttermost all the resources of the country; and which, as a whole, must always be regarded by Britons with pride and exultation. We had given peace to the world; but we were unable to preserve tranquillity at home. War is, at the best, a bad education, if sometimes a necessary one, for a young people; and a mature nation will find that its costs are not only money and men. It is a lottery on the grandest scale, both of fortune and life, inducing waste of the one, and recklessness of the other; removing, therefore, in a great measure, the vulgar motives of action, and importing a general laxity of principle. In various ways a long war produces an intestinal feverishness, aggravating any incidental disorder, and favourable to the designs of incendiaries.

The peace was followed by a general fall in wages. It was a result beyond the control of legislation; and it would probably have been unfelt, if prices also had fallen, as naturally they should have done. But the legislature was able in part to prevent this decline, and exercised its power in favour of agricultural produce. Flaming homesteads and shattered machinery soon proclaimed the discontent of the labouring population.

Political agitators sought to turn this discontent into disaffection. Parliamentary reform was demanded with a considerable show of violence. There was much fierce speaking; numbers of clubs started into existence; individuals disfigured themselves with strange costumes; mobs collected in great multitudes. Presently budding Lafayettes discussed the most convenient length for pikes, and would-be Buonapartes mustered their platoons by moonlight.

There was a good deal that was wicked, and not a little that was grotesque, in these proceedings. One party persisted in seeing only the white side of the shield, and declared they were merely ridiculous; another had eyes only for the black, and exaggerated their danger. Nothing is so fatal to the cause of civil liberty as the abuse of the privileges which it confers. The nation consents to wear chains, to control a rebellious member. Having the gout in its great toe, the body politic restricts its indulgences. It was so at the period of which we are treating. The real amount of danger is a question which the candour of posterity will admit could hardly be discussed with tranquillity at the time. Certain it is, that alarm was very great and very general, and under its pressure the nation resigned for a season some of its dearest birth-rights. Personal liberty was endangered by the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act; the press was shackled; the right of meeting was limited. Arrests were made far and wide. A north-country squire, trotting quietly along upon his hack to meet the hounds, was swept off to jail, instead of sweeping after the fox, suspected of a design to raise the shepherds. It was a mistake, and it is probable that such were not rare. The practice of receiving information from spies, and still more the air of mystery assumed by those in authority, multiplied the apprehensions which might justly be excited by any tumultuous proceedings.

Cornelius Peach was one of those who were willing to believe the alarm to be in the main unfounded, and he used good-humouredly to quiz his sister for the timidity with which she adopted every rumour of the day. The worthy clerk was clearly in some matters a follower of the philosopher of Abdera. He very much preferred laughter to tears; regarded public affairs with a lofty disdain, so long as his roast, boiled, or hashed was ready at the right time; lived in a Utopia of his own, and was more likely to die of seeing an ass eating figs than of any ordinary calamity. He could not understand why an individual should fret himself concerning parliamentary corruption, tyranny of government, abuse of patronage, or any other stalking-horse of sedition. No one had attempted to bribe him; he felt indifferently free; he was a candidate for no place; he had no vote for anything, and rejoiced that he had not. His even cheerfulness was wont to make his friends declare, that their Peach was all sunny side; there were no signs of shade about him.

His lodger was of a less contented mood: the symptoms of effervescence had assumed a somewhat menacing aspect around his home. For some time much disquiet had prevailed among the miners of Somersetshire, and the same was now rapidly spreading among their Cornish brethren, from Redruth to St. Ives. Minor outrages were of no uncommon occurrence. The dread which Miss Peach seemed to entertain of seeing a modern Jack Straw encamped on Hampstead Heath, was felt on better grounds in the far-west, and caused trepidation among the tea-sipping gossips of Kerrier and Penwith. So the orphans learnt from the letters of Polydore Riches. And they were made rather anxious by perceiving, that the good chaplain seemed in writing, to disguise the real amount of his apprehensions. Often in reading his missives, did Randolph and Helen turn their thoughts fondly towards Trevethlan, and wish they had never left the towers by the sea.

And in the brother such yearnings were quickened by an ever-increasing discontent with his position. This feeling had soon driven him from Winter's chambers, and he was now reading with Mr. Travers, an eminent special pleader. But dissatisfaction was again creeping over him. It was true he did not neglect his studies, and he had duly eaten his dinners to keep Michaelmas Term. Surely there is no fear that any of our old institutions to which a dinner is attached will wholly die. There is a strength in the British appetite, against which utilitarianism may struggle in vain, till hunger and thirst are no more. So at the Inns of Court. The exercises, and moots, and even the revels have vanished, but the dinners remain. Attendance on the former has been commuted into fines to maintain the latter. And long may they endure, those social meetings, where many a lasting friendship is formed, and the bonds of brotherhood cemented, which in England unite an order, declared by D'Aguesseau, aussi ancien que la magistrature, aussi noble que la vertu, aussi nÉcessaire que la justice.

As a novice, Randolph was partly interested and partly disconcerted on his introduction to these assemblies. He felt a reverence for the old hall, standing on the site of that of the knights whose dust reposed in the neighbouring church. He looked with respect on the coats of arms of the successive treasurers, emblazoned on the oak panelling of the walls, and subscribed with many a name of high distinction. On the dais, beneath the portraits of Littleton and Coke, sat some of the leading advocates of the day, partaking a more luxurious repast than that allotted to the occupants of the floor below. And on the opposite side to the young student were the juniors of the bar, men who had risen, were rising, had not begun to rise, and never would rise.

It was all curious and new. The very gown in which Randolph dined, rustled on his shoulders with a forensic feeling. The repast was apportioned to messes of four, all of which had precisely the same fare. The attendants were called paniers; because—an enemy has suggested—supported by donkeys. The platters were of Peter Piper's metal, and the cups were earthenware. As at the table of Prior's pococurante couple—

Trifles all these: forgotten perhaps by the fortunate lawyer, whose clerk groans under the weight of his brief-bag; ridiculed by the disappointed man, whose early clients have long disappeared; but interesting and entertaining to the neophyte, whose ambition foresees the career of the first, whose self-reliance is too strong to fear the fate of the second.

These last were the feelings which had inspired Randolph in the solitude of Trevethlan Castle, and conjured up those airy visions which seemed so fair in the sight of himself and his sister. The very first encounter with the world had dimmed the prospect for a moment, and the brother's subsequent intercourse with it confirmed rather than diminished his disappointment. It was not that he was disheartened by perceiving how very inadequate an idea he had formed of the labour necessary to attain his object. The long rows of law-calf on Mr. Travers's shelves had no terrors for him. Nor was it that he felt as yet any decided uneasiness at living under a feigned name. He had never for an instant imagined it was wrong, and it had his father's sanction. Yet this circumstance might be a chief source of his discontent. He had not known the levelling tendency of a public school, nor the freedom of college. From those early lessons in the picture-gallery at Trevethlan, he had silently grown up in the consciousness that he should be the head of an ancient race, and perhaps, in building his castle in the air, he regarded himself as an architect in the midst of masons. He never thought of himself as Morton, humble and unknown, but as the representative of a high family, recognized and honoured.

So Mr. Griffith was right, and Polydore Riches wrong. But the worthy chaplain was in no fault. No education could have prevailed against the circumstances of the case. A youth spent in isolation and reverie, is almost certain to lead to a manhood of irresolution. The habit of thinking becomes a curse, when it is developed too early. Such precociousness is apt to result in a purely negative character. This was the misfortune of Randolph. And although he carefully pursued his studies, and concealed his disquietude from Helen, he often sighed for the peace of his home, and sometimes even thought of abandoning his scheme, and returning thither.

The same feelings made him distant and reserved in his intercourse with the men in Hall and at Mr. Travers's chambers. He had no sympathy with their buoyancy, and he disliked their familiarity. There was, however, one of the latter, with whom he grew gradually intimate, having been introduced to him by Mr. Winter. Seymour Rereworth was a man of calm but decided opinions, of quiet and diligent habits, of polished manners, and of great attainments. He possessed also the advantages which Randolph missed so much, having been educated at Eton, and having obtained high honours at college. Looking to his profession for distinction more than actual maintenance, he earnestly and steadily pursued his aim, never revolting from the weary drudgery, never disheartened by the thorny intricacies, through which the lawyer is doomed to plod in his way to eminence. Very particular in his choice of friends, he was interested by the mixture of enthusiasm and embarrassment which he detected in Randolph, and sought his friendship. Where Rereworth sought, he won. And he was of great service to his companion, supplying his want of knowledge of the world with his own, which was of the best kind; not consisting in a familiarity with knavery and vice, but able to foil the one and repel the other; and excelling in all those qualities which are comprised in the word, tact. He had a large acquaintance in society; was himself very well connected; was always a welcome guest, and, when he chose to throw away an evening, had always an invitation available.

Him did Randolph once or twice, during the winter, persuade to come and spend an evening at Hampstead. And it must be confessed that Seymour paid his second visit at least as willingly as his first. If he liked the brother, he no less admired the sister. He mused sometimes on the circumstances of so singular, he might say so romantic, a pair. Helen's dark and gentle eyes, and soft and pleasant tones, haunted him occasionally in his studies, and kept his pen suspended in the midst of many a tedious draught. But Rereworth was not a man to fall in love in a hurry.

For Helen, she was always glad to see him. In spite of all her brother's precautions, she sometimes detected the gloom and discontent which hung upon his brow, and she saw that Rereworth's society always charmed them away. Her own life was so tranquil and uniform that she had soon ceased to regret the quiet of Trevethlan, and she roamed about the vicinity of Hampstead, seeking a spot she might liken to Merlin's Cave, and only occasionally disturbed by the letters of Polydore Riches.