ct of the confident fortress, which neither
challenges nor cries to treat, but commands respect. How did she
accomplish this miracle of commanding respect after such a string of
somersaults before the London world?

He had to drive North-westward: his word was pledged to one of his
donkey Ixionides--Abrane, he recollected--to be a witness at some
contemptible exhibition of the fellow's muscular skill: a match to punt
against a Thames waterman: this time. Odd how it should come about that
the giving of his word forced him now to drive away from the woman once
causing him to curse his luck as the prisoner of his word! However,
there was to be an end of it soon--a change; change as remarkable as
Harry Monmouth's at the touching of his crown. Though in these days, in
our jog-trot Old England, half a step on the road to greatness is the
utmost we can hop; and all England jeers at the man attempting it. He
caps himself with this or that one of their titles. For it is not the
popular thing among Englishmen. Their hero, when they have done their
fighting, is the wealthy patron of Sport. What sort of creatures are his
comrades? But he cannot have comrades unless he is on the level of them.
Yet let him be never so high above them, they charge him and point him
as a piece of cannon; assenting to the flatteries they puff into him, he
is their engine. 'The idol of the hour is the mob's wooden puppet, and
the doing of the popular thing seed of no harvest,' Gower Woodseer says,
moderately well, snuffing incense of his happy delivery. Not to be
the idol, to have an aim of our own, there lies the truer pride, if we
intend respect of ourselves.

The Mr. Pulpit young men have in them, until their habits have fretted
him out, was directing Lord Fleetwood's meditations upon the errors
of the general man, as a cover for lateral references to his hitherto
erratic career: not much worse than a swerving from the right line,
which now seemed the desirable road for him, and had previously seemed
so stale, so repulsive. He was, of course, only half-conscious of his
pulpitizing; he fancied the serious vein of his thoughts attributable
to a tumbled night. Nevertheless, he had the question whether that
woman--poor girl!--was influencing his thoughts. For in a moment,
the very word 'respect' pitched him upon her character; to see it a
character that emerged beneath obstacles, and overcame ridicule, won
suffrages, won a reluctant husband's admiration,