bound fast together, and had to go on.  Beauchamp, with a furious tug of Radicalism, spoken or performed, pulled Cougham on his beam-ends.  Cougham, to right himself, defined his Liberalism sharply from the politics of the pit, pointed to France and her Revolutions, washed his hands of excesses, and entirely overset Beauchamp.  Seeing that he stood in the Liberal interest, the junior could not abandon the Liberal flag; so he seized it and bore it ahead of the time, there where Radicals trip their phantom dances like shadows on a fog, and waved it as the very flag of our perfectible race.  So great was the impetus that Cougham had no choice but to step out with him briskly—­voluntarily as a man propelled by a hand on his coat-collar.  A word saved him:  the word practical.  ‘Are we practical?’ he inquired, and shivered Beauchamp’s galloping frame with a violent application of the stop abrupt; for that question, ‘Are we practical?’ penetrates the bosom of an English audience, and will surely elicit a response if not. plaudits.  Practical or not, the good people affectingly wish to be thought practical.  It has been asked by them.

If we’re not practical, what are we?—­Beauchamp, talking to Cougham apart, would argue that the daring and the far-sighted course was often the most practical.  Cougham extended a deprecating hand:  ’Yes, I have gone over all that.’  Occasionally he was maddening.

The melancholy position of the senior and junior Liberals was known abroad and matter of derision.

It happened that the gay and good-humoured young Lord Palmet, heir to the earldom of Elsea, walking up the High Street of Bevisham, met Beauchamp on Tuesday morning as he sallied out of his hotel to canvass.  Lord Palmet was one of the numerous half-friends of Cecil Baskelett, and it may be a revelation of his character to you, that he owned to liking Beauchamp because of his having always been a favourite with the women.  He began chattering, with Beauchamp’s hand in his:  ’I’ve hit on you, have I?  My dear fellow, Miss Halkett was talking of you last night.  I slept at Mount Laurels; went on purpose to have a peep.  I’m bound for Itchincope.  They’ve some grand procession in view there; Lespel wrote for my team; I suspect he’s for starting some new October races.  He talks of half-a-dozen drags.  He must have lots of women there.  I say, what a splendid creature Cissy Halkett has shot up!  She topped the season this year, and will next.  You’re for the darkies, Beauchamp.  So am I, when I don’t see a blonde; just as a fellow admires a girl when there’s no married woman or widow in sight.  And, I say, it can’t be true you’ve gone in for that crazy Radicalism?  There’s nothing to be gained by it, you know; the women hate it!  A married blonde of five-and-twenty’s the Venus of them all.  Mind you, I don’t forget that Mrs. Wardour-Devereux is a thorough-paced brunette; but, upon my honour, I’d bet on Cissy Halkett at forty.  “A dark eye in woman,” if you like, but blue and auburn drive it into a corner.’