s credentials. Some, because the club appeared to
flourish, many because it was not yet overcrowded, and a few because
they were in perfect agreement with the varying opinions of its ultimate
presiding genius, Disraeli himself. They worked quietly, not in the
House of Commons, but outside it, delivering lectures, writing books,
starting newspapers, holding meetings, and enlisting the sympathies of
rich, idle, ambitious, or titled women. There seemed no end or limit to
the variety of their interests, their methods of labour, or their
conceit. The club--judged by the leonine measure of success--as a club
did little for learning or literary men. It became a mere meeting-house
for dining and drinking, but it promoted cordiality among the leading
members of the young Tory party, and brought persons together who could
not, in the ordinary way of life, have met each other at all. Although
the more gaudy and best known among them came from the first second-rate
families in England, the rank and file were formed mainly by young men
of good estate and breeding--the sons of clergy, country squires, or
merchants, all sprung from that class which is called Middle, because it
represents civilised society neither in its rough beginnings nor in its
tawdry decay."

Berenville's remarks, it will be plainly seen, anticipate our history a
little, for, at the time of which we write, the Bond of Association was
still maintaining a sickly existence on its original programme. Orange
had not yet been invited to join it, nor had Lord Reckage declared
himself a moral philosopher.

On this particular afternoon his lordship entered, from the street, a
narrow vestibule, the red walls of which were lit up by wax candles set
at either end in ponderous bronze chandeliers. From this he passed into
a square inner hall, paved with marble, and furnished by carved seats
which had once belonged to the choir of an ancient chapel in
Northumberland. Here he paused, for his attention was immediately
arrested by a small group of four or five individuals who were talking
with great earnestness at the foot of the oak staircase. Not that this
was, in itself, an unusual event, for ever since a memorable day when
the Earl of Bampton and the young Archdeacon of Soham, feeling warm, had
ordered their tea to be served in that part of the building, it had been
the fashion for distinguished members to assemble there, dispersing
themselves in careless profusion among the s