r
the conceited. His political prepossessions showed themselves in a very
different manner. Throughout the whole of the five lustres I have named,
he was never heard to whisper a censure against government, let its
measures, or the character of its administration, be what it would.
It was enough for him that it was government. Even taxation no longer
excited his ire, nor aroused his eloquence. He conceived it to be
necessary to order, and especially to the protection of property, a
branch of political science that he had so studied as to succeed in
protecting his own estate, in a measure, against even this great ally
itself. After he became worth a million, it was observed that all his
opinions grew less favorable to mankind in general, and that he was much
disposed to exaggerate the amount and quality of the few boons which
Providence has bestowed on the poor. The report of a meeting of the
Whigs generally had an effect on his appetite; a resolution that was
suspected of emanating from Brookes's commonly robbed him of a dinner,
and the Radicals never seriously moved that he did not spend a sleepless
night, and pass a large portion of the next day in uttering words that
it would be hardly moral to repeat. I may without impropriety add,
however, that on such occasions he did not spare allusions to the
gallows; Sir Francis Burdett, in particular, was a target for a good
deal of billingsgate; and men as upright and as respectable even as my
lords Grey, Landsdowne, and Holland, were treated as if they were
no better than they should be. But on these little details it is
unnecessary to dwell, for it must be a subject of common remark, that
the more elevated and refined men become in their political ethics, the
more they are accustomed to throw dirt upon their neighbors. I will
just state, however, that most of what I have here related has been
transmitted to me by direct oral traditions, for I seldom saw my
ancestor, and when we did meet, it was only to settle accounts, to eat a
leg of mutton together, and to part like those who, at least, have never
quarrelled.

Not so with Dr. Etherington. Habit (to say nothing of my own merits)
had attached him to one who owed so much to his care, and his doors were
always as open to me as if I had been his own son.

It has been said that most of my idle time (omitting the part misspent
in the schools) was passed at the rectory.

The excellent divine had married a lovely woman, a year