rifying of sinners into penitence and confession
and the monkish cowl up to life's end, not to speak of the abjuration of
worldly possessions and donation of them into the keeping of the shaven
brothers; when either they would have settled a band of them here in
our very midst, or they would have impoverished--is not too strong a
word--the country by taking the money's worth of the mines, estates,
mansions, freehold streets and squares of our metropolis out of it
without scruple; rejoicing so to bleed the Protestant faith. Underrate
it now--then it was a truly justifiable anxiety: insomuch that you heard
people of station, eminent titled persons, asking, like the commonest
low Radicals, whether it was prudent legislation to permit of the
inheritance of such vast wealth by a young man, little more than a boy,
and noted for freaks. And some declared it could not be allowed for
foreign monks to have a claim to inherit English property. There was a
general consent, that if the Earl of Fleetwood went to the extreme of
making over his property to those monks, he should be pronounced insane
and incapable. Ultimately the world was a little pacified by hearing
that a portion of it was entailed, Esslemont and the Welsh mines.

So it might be; but what if he had no child! The marriage amazing
everybody scarcely promised fruit, it was thought. Countess Livia, much
besought for her opinion, scouted the possibility. And Carinthia
Jane was proclaimed by John Rose Mackrell (to his dying day the
poor gentleman tried vainly to get the second syllable of his name
accentuated) a young woman who would outlive twice over the husband she
had. He said of his name, it was destined to pass him down a dead
fish in the nose of posterity, and would affect his best jokes; which
something has done, or the present generation has lost the sense of
genuine humour.

Thanks to him, the talk of the Whitechapel Countess again sprang up,
merrily as ever; and after her having become, as he said, 'a desiccated
celebrity,' she outdid cabinet ministers and naughty wives for a living
morsel in the world's mouth. She was denounced by the patriotic party as
the cause of the earl's dalliance with Rome.

The earl, you are to know, was then coasting along the Mediterranean, on
board his beautiful schooner yacht, with his Lord Feltre, bound to make
an inspection of Syrian monasteries, and forget, if he could, the face
of all faces, another's possession by the law.