an another to prosecute my
search for the Captain, and as I thought I might as well call at our
lodgings to inquire if he had not returned, I answered that I should
be very happy to accompany his lordship; "Though the City," said I,
smiling, "sounds to me strange upon the lips of Sir Sedley--I beg
pardon, I should say of Lord--"

"Don't say any such thing; let me once more hear the grateful sound of
Sedley Beaudesert. Shut the door, Thomas to Gracechurch Street,--Messrs.
Fudge & Fidget."

The carriage drove on.

"A sad affliction has befallen me," said the marquis, "and none
sympathize with me!"

"Yet all, even unacquainted with the late lord, must have felt shocked
at the death of one so young and so full of promise."

"So fitted in every way to bear the burden of the great Castleton name
and property. And yet you see it killed him! Ah! if he had been but a
simple gentleman, or if he had had a less conscientious desire to do
his duties, he would have lived to a good old age. I know what it is
already. Oh, if you saw the piles of letters on my table! I positively
dread the post. Such colossal improvement on the property which the poor
boy had began, for me to finish. What do you think takes me to Fudge &
Fidget's? Sir, they are the agents for an infernal coal-mine which
my cousin had re-opened in Durham, to plague my life out with another
thirty thousand pounds a year! How am I to spend the money?--how am I to
spend it? There's a cold-blooded head steward who says that charity is
the greatest crime a man in high station can commit,--it demoralizes the
poor. Then, because some half-a-dozen farmers sent me a round-robin to
the effect that their rents were too high, and I wrote them word that
the rents should be lowered, there was such a hullabaloo, you would have
thought heaven and earth were coming together. 'If a man in the position
of the Marquis of Castleton set the example of letting land below its
value, how could the poorer squires in the country exist? Or if they
did exist, what injustice to expose them to the charge that they
were grasping landlords, vampires, and bloodsuckers! Clearly if Lord
Castleton lowered his rents (they were too low already), he struck
a mortal blow at the property of his neighbors if they followed his
example, or at their characters if they did not.' No man can tell how
hard it is to do good, unless fortune gives him a hundred thousand
pounds a-year, and says--'Now, do good with it!