if he got the opportunity, to strike a good hard blow in defence of law and order.  Already he was well on the way to possess a solid stake in the country, and the native conservatism of his temperament grew stronger as circumstances bent themselves to his will; a proletarian conquering wealth and influence naturally prizes these things in proportion to the effort their acquisition has cost him.  When he heard of his brother’s death, he could in conscience say nothing more than ’Serve him right!’ For all that, he paid the funeral expenses of the Chartist—­angrily declining an offer from Henry’s co-zealots, who would have buried the martyr at their common charges—­and proceeded to inquire after the widow and son.  Joseph Mutimer, already one- or two-and-twenty, was in no need of help; he and his mother, naturally prejudiced against the thriving uncle, declared themselves satisfied with their lot, and desired no further connection with a relative who was practically a stranger to them.

So Richard went on his way and heaped up riches.  When already middle-aged he took to himself a wife, his choice being marked with characteristic prudence.  The woman he wedded was turned thirty, had no money, and few personal charms, but was a lady.  Richard was fully able to appreciate education and refinement; to judge from the course of his later life, one would have said that he had sought money only as a means, the end he really aimed at being the satisfaction of instincts which could only have full play in a higher social sphere.  No doubt the truth was that success sweetened his character, and developed, as is so often the case, those possibilities of his better nature which a fruitless struggle would have kept in the germ or altogether crushed.  His excellent wife influenced him profoundly; at her death the work was continued by the daughter she left him.  The defects of his early education could not of course be repaired, but it is never too late for a man to go to school to the virtues which civilise.  Remaining the sturdiest of Conservatives, he bowed in sincere humility to those very claims which the Radical most angrily disallows:  birth, hereditary station, recognised gentility—­these things made the strongest demand upon his reverence.  Such an attitude was a testimony to his own capacity for culture, since he knew not the meaning of vulgar adulation, and did in truth perceive the beauty of those qualities to which the uneducated Iconoclast is wholly blind.  It was a joyous day for him when he saw his daughter the wife of Godfrey Eldon.  The loss which so soon followed was correspondingly hard to bear, and but for Mrs. Eldon’s gentle sympathy he would scarcely have survived the blow.  We know already how his character had impressed that lady; such respect was not lightly to be won, and he came to regard it as the most precious thing that life had left him.