it at all is the wonder.  And not only has she to stupefy the taxpayer by a timely display of feastings and fireworks, she has to stop all that nonsense (to quote a satiated man lightened in his purse) at the right moment, about the hour when the old standfasts, who have simply been doing duty, return, poor jog-trot fellows, and a complimentary motto or two is the utmost she can present to them.  On the other hand, it is true she gives her first loves, those early birds, fully to understand that a change has come in their island mother’s mind.  If there is a balance to be righted, she leaves that business to society, and if it be the season for the gathering of society, it will be righted more or less; and if no righting is done at all, perhaps the Press will incidentally toss a leaf of laurel on a name or two:  thus in the exercise of grumbling doing good.

With few exceptions, Nevil Beauchamp’s heroes received the motto instead of the sweetmeat.  England expected them to do their duty; they did it, and she was not dissatisfied, nor should they be.  Beauchamp, at a distance from the scene, chafed with customary vehemence, concerning the unjust measure dealt to his favourites:  Captain Hardist, of the Diomed, twenty years a captain, still a captain!  Young Michell denied the cross!  Colonel Evans Cuff, on the heights from first to last, and not advanced a step!  But Prancer, and Plunger, and Lammakin were thoroughly well taken care of, this critic of the war wrote savagely, reviving an echo of a queer small circumstance occurring in the midst of the high dolour and anxiety of the whole nation, and which a politic country preferred to forget, as we will do, for it was but an instance of strong family feeling in high quarters; and is not the unity of the country founded on the integrity of the family sentiment?  Is it not certain, which the master tells us, that a line is but a continuation of a number of dots?  Nevil Beauchamp was for insisting that great Government officers had paid more attention to a dot or two than to the line.  He appeared to be at war with his country after the peace.  So far he had a lively ally in his uncle Everard; but these remarks of his were a portion of a letter, whose chief burden was the request that Everard Romfrey would back him in proposing for the hand of a young French lady, she being, Beauchamp smoothly acknowledged, engaged to a wealthy French marquis, under the approbation of her family.  Could mortal folly outstrip a petition of that sort?  And apparently, according to the wording and emphasis of the letter, it was the mature age of the marquis which made Mr. Beauchamp so particularly desirous to stop the projected marriage and take the girl himself.  He appealed to his uncle on the subject in a ‘really—­really’ remonstrative tone, quite overwhelming to read.  ’It ought not to be permitted:  by all the laws of chivalry, I should write to the girl’s father to interdict it:  I really am particeps criminis in a sin against nature if I don’t!’ Mr. Romfrey interjected in burlesque of his ridiculous nephew, with collapsing laughter.  But he expressed an indignant surprise at Nevil for allowing Rosamund to travel alone.