imilarly commissioning the reverberation of them to belabour his name
before the public. Admirers were still prepared to admire; but aldermen
not at the feast, squire-archs not in the saddle or at the bottle, some
few of the juvenile and female fervent, were becoming susceptible to a
frosty critical tone in the public pronunciation of Lord Ormont's name
since the printing of his letter and the letters it called forth. None of
them doubted that his case was good. The doubt concerned the effect on it
of his manner of pleading it. And if he damaged his case, he compromised
his admirers. Why, the case of a man who has cleverly won a bold stroke
for his country must be good, as long as he holds his tongue. A grateful
country will right him in the end: he has only to wait, and not so very
long. "This I did: now examine it." Nothing more needed to be said by
him, if that.

True, he has a temper. It is owned that he is a hero. We take him with
his qualities, impetuosity being one, and not unsuited to his arm of the
service, as he has shown. If his temper is high, it is an element of a
character proved heroical. So has the sun his blotches, and we believe
that they go to nourish the luminary, rather than that they are a disease
of the photosphere.

Lord Ormont's apologists had to contend with anecdotes and dicta now
pouring in from offended Britons, for illustration of an impetuosity fit
to make another Charley XII. of Sweden--a gratuitous Coriolanus
haughtiness as well, new among a people accustomed socially to bow the
head to their nobles, and not, of late, expecting a kick for their pains.
Newspapers wrote of him that, "a martinet to subordinates, he was known
for the most unruly of lieutenants." They alluded to current sayings, as
that he "habitually took counsel of his horse on the field when a
movement was entrusted to his discretion." Numerous were the journalistic
sentences running under an air of eulogy of the lordly warrior purposely
to be tripped, and producing their damnable effect, despite the obvious
artifice. The writer of the letter from Bombay, signed Ormont, was a born
subject for the antithetical craftsmen's tricky springes.

He was, additionally, of infamous repute for morale in burgess
estimation, from his having a keen appreciation of female beauty and a
prickly sense of masculine honour. The stir to his name roused
pestilential domestic stories. In those days the aristocrat still claimed
licence, and emi