ndeed, to
stand, having been asked; but the thing would interfere wonderfully
with his business; and then, what did he know about Parliament?
Nothing on earth: it was the maddest scheme, but nevertheless, he was
not going to hang back when called upon--he had always been rough and
ready when wanted,--and there he was now ready as ever, and rough
enough too, God knows."

'Twas thus that he had spoken of his coming parliamentary honours;
and men had generally taken him at his word. He had been returned,
and this success had been hailed as a great thing for the cause and
class to which he belonged. But men did not know that his inner heart
was swelling with triumph, and that his bosom could hardly contain
his pride as he reflected that the poor Barchester stone-mason was
now the representative in Parliament of his native city. And so, when
his seat was attacked, he still laughed and joked. "They were welcome
to it for him," he said; "he could keep it or want it; and of the
two, perhaps, the want of it would come most convenient to him. He
did not exactly think that he had bribed any one; but if the bigwigs
chose to say so, it was all one to him. He was rough and ready, now
as ever," &c., &c.

But when the struggle came, it was to him a fearful one; not the
less fearful because there was no one, no, not one friend in all the
world, to whom he could open his mind and speak out honestly what
was in his heart. To Dr Thorne he might perhaps have done so had his
intercourse with the doctor been sufficiently frequent; but it was
only now and again when he was ill, or when the squire wanted to
borrow money, that he saw Dr Thorne. He had plenty of friends, heaps
of friends in the parliamentary sense; friends who talked about
him, and lauded him at public meetings; who shook hands with him on
platforms, and drank his health at dinners; but he had no friend
who could sit with him over his own hearth, in true friendship, and
listen to, and sympathise with, and moderate the sighings of the
inner man. For him there was no sympathy; no tenderness of love; no
retreat, save into himself, from the loud brass band of the outer
world.

The blow hit him terribly hard. It did not come altogether
unexpectedly, and yet, when it did come, it was all but unendurable.
He had made so much of the power of walking into that august chamber,
and sitting shoulder to shoulder in legislative equality with the
sons of dukes and the curled darlings of th