ge of it, the noble rebel is bound for the
sake of his aim to ask himself how much of a giant he is, lest he fall
like a blot on the page, instead of inscribing intelligible characters
there.

Moreover, his relatives are present to assure him that he did not jump
out of Jupiter's head or come of the doctor. They hang on him like an
ill-conditioned prickly garment; and if he complains of the irritation
they cause him, they one and all denounce his irritable skin.

Fretted by his relatives he cannot be much of a giant.

Beauchamp looked from Dr. Shrapnel in his invalid's chair to his uncle
Everard breathing robustly, and mixed his uncle's errors with those of
the world which honoured and upheld him. His remainder of equability
departed; his impatience increased. His appetite for work at Dr.
Shrapnel's writing-desk was voracious. He was ready for any labour,
the transcribing of papers, writing from dictation, whatsoever was of
service to Lord Avonley's victim: and he was not like the Spartan boy
with the wolf at his vitals; he betrayed it in the hue his uncle Everard
detested, in a visible nervousness, and indulgence in fits of scorn.
Sharp epigrams and notes of irony provoked his laughter more than fun.
He seemed to acquiesce in some of the current contemporary despair of
our immoveable England, though he winced at a satire on his country, and
attempted to show that the dull dominant class of moneymakers was the
ruin of her. Wherever he stood to represent Dr. Shrapnel, as against
Mr. Grancey Lespel on account of the Itchincope encroachments, he left a
sting that spread the rumour of his having become not only a black
torch of Radicalism--our modern provincial estateholders and their
wives bestow that reputation lightly--but a gentleman with the polish
scratched off him in parts. And he, though individually he did not
understand how there was to be game in the land if game-preserving was
abolished, signed his name R. C. S. NEVIL BEAUCHAMP for Dr. SHRAPNEL,
in the communications directed to solicitors of the persecutors of
poachers.

His behaviour to Grancey Lespel was eclipsed by his treatment of Captain
Baskelett. Cecil had ample reason to suppose his cousin to be friendly
with him. He himself had forgotten Dr. Shrapnel, and all other
dissensions, in a supremely Christian spirit. He paid his cousin the
compliment to think that he had done likewise. At Romfrey and in London
he had spoken to Nevil of his designs upon th