had no further occasion
for their services; and in Richard Waverley's case, which the minister
considered as aggravated by ingratitude, dismissal was accompanied by
something like personal contempt and contumely. The public, and even the
party of whom he shared the fall, sympathised little in the
disappointment of this selfish and interested statesman; and he retired
to the country under the comfortable reflection that he had lost, at the
same time, character, credit, and,--what he at least equally
deplored,--emolument.

Richard Waverley's letter to his son upon this occasion was a masterpiece
of its kind. Aristides himself could not have made out a harder case. An
unjust monarch and an ungrateful country were the burden of each rounded
paragraph. He spoke of long services and unrequited sacrifices; though
the former had been overpaid by his salary, and nobody could guess in
what the latter consisted, unless it were in his deserting, not from
conviction, but for the lucre of gain, the Tory principles of his family.
In the conclusion, his resentment was wrought to such an excess by the
force of his own oratory, that he could not repress some threats of
vengeance, however vague and impotent, and finally acquainted his son
with his pleasure that he should testify his sense of the ill-treatment
he had sustained by throwing up his commission as soon as the letter
reached him. This, he said, was also his uncle's desire, as he would
himself intimate in due course.

Accordingly, the next letter which Edward opened was from Sir Everard.
His brother's disgrace seemed to have removed from his well-natured bosom
all recollection of their differences, and, remote as he was from every
means of learning that Richard's disgrace was in reality only the just as
well as natural consequence of his own unsuccessful intrigues, the good
but credulous Baronet at once set it down as a new and enormous instance
of the injustice of the existing government. It was true, he said, and he
must not disguise it even from Edward, that his father could not have
sustained such an insult as was now, for the first time, offered to one
of his house, unless he had subjected himself to it by accepting of an
employment under the present system. Sir Everard had no doubt that he now
both saw and felt the magnitude of this error, and it should be his (Sir
Everard's) business to take care that the cause of his regret should not
extend itself to pecuniary consequen