you're sure to be right. I'll
lay you a blood-brood mare to a cabstand skeleton, you'll have an easy
conscience and deserve the thanks of the country.'

Nevil listened gravely. The soundness of the head and legs of the country
he took for granted. The inflated state of the unchivalrous middle,
denominated Manchester, terrified him. Could it be true that England was
betraying signs of decay? and signs how ignoble! Half-a-dozen crescent
lines cunningly turned, sketched her figure before the world, and the
reflection for one ready to die upholding her was that the portrait was
no caricature. Such an emblematic presentation of the land of his filial
affection haunted him with hideous mockeries. Surely the foreigner
hearing our boasts of her must compare us to showmen bawling the
attractions of a Fat Lady at a fair!

Swoln Manchester bore the blame of it. Everard exulted to hear his young
echo attack the cotton-spinners. But Nevil was for a plan, a system,
immediate action; the descending among the people, and taking an
initiative, LEADING them, insisting on their following, not standing
aloof and shrugging.

'We lead them in war,' said he; 'why not in peace? There's a front for
peace as well as war, and that's our place rightly. We're pushed aside;
why, it seems to me we're treated like old-fashioned ornaments! The fault
must be ours. Shrugging and sneering is about as honourable as blazing
fireworks over your own defeat. Back we have to go! that's the point,
sir. And as for jeering the cotton-spinners, I can't while they've the
lead of us. We let them have it! And we have thrice the stake in the
country. I don't mean properties and titles.'

'Deuce you don't,' said his uncle.

'I mean our names, our histories; I mean our duties. As for titles, the
way to defend them is to be worthy of them.'

'Damned fine speech,' remarked Everard. 'Now you get out of that trick of
prize-orationing. I call it snuffery, sir; it's all to your own nose!
You're talking to me, not to a gallery. "Worthy of them!" Caesar wraps
his head in his robe: he gets his dig in the ribs for all his
attitudinizing. It's very well for a man to talk like that who owns no
more than his barebodkin life, poor devil. Tall talk's his jewelry: he
must have his dandification in bunkum. You ought to know better. Property
and titles are worth having, whether you are "worthy of them" or a
disgrace to your class. The best way of defending them is to keep a
strong