denied me all pretension to the
simple air of a gentleman, for every third passenger turns back to look
at me. I retreat to my hotel; send for boot-maker, hatter, tailor,
and hair-cutter. I humanize myself from head to foot. Even Ulysses
is obliged to have recourse to the arts of Minerva, and, to speak
unmetaphorically, "smarten himself up," before the faithful Penelope
condescends to acknowledge him.

The artificers promise all despatch. Meanwhile I hasten to re-make
acquaintance with my mother-country over files of the "Times," "Post,"
"Chronicle," and "Herald." Nothing comes amiss to me but articles on
Australia; from those I turn aside with the true pshaw supercilious of
your practical man.

No more are leaders filled with praise and blame of Trevanion. "Percy's
spur is cold." Lord Ulverstone figures only in the "Court Circular,"
or "Fashionable Movements." Lord Ulverstone entertains a royal duke at
dinner, or dines in turn with a royal duke, or has come to town, or gone
out of it. At most (faint Platonic reminiscence of the former life),
Lord Ulverstone says in the House of Lords a few words on some question,
not a party one, and on which (though affecting perhaps the interests of
some few thousands, or millions, as the case may be) men speak without
"hears," and are inaudible in the gallery; or Lord Ulverstone takes the
chair at an agricultural meeting, or returns thanks when his health is
drunk at a dinner at Guildhall. But the daughter rises as the father
sets, though over a very different kind of world.

"First ball of the season at Castleton House,"--long description of
the rooms and the company; above all, of the hostess. Lines on the
Marchioness of Castleton's picture in the "Book of Beauty," by the Hon.
Fitzroy Fiddledum, beginning with "Art thou an angel from," etc.: a
paragraph that pleased me more, on "Lady Castleton's Infant School at
Raby Park;" then again, "Lady Castleton, the new patroness at Almack's;"
a criticism, more rapturous than ever gladdened living poet, on Lady
Castleton's superb diamond stomacher, just reset by Storr & Mortimer;
Westmacott's bust of Lady Castleton; Landseer's picture of Lady
Castleton and her children in the costume of the olden time. Not a month
in that long file of the "Morning Post" but what Lady Castleton shone
forth from the rest of womankind,--

"Velut inter ignes Luna minores."

The blood mounted to my cheek. Was it to this splendid constellation
in the