the aristocrat still
claimed licence, and eminent soldier-nobles, comporting themselves as
imitative servants of their god Mars, on the fields of love and war,
stood necessarily prepared to vindicate their conduct as the field of
the measured paces, without deeming themselves bounden to defend the
course they took. Our burgess, who bowed head to his aristocrat,
and hired the soldier to fight for him, could not see that such
mis-behaviour necessarily ensued. Lord Ormont had fought duels at home
and abroad. His readiness to fight again, and against odds, and with a
totally unused weapon, was exhibited by his attack on the Press in the
columns of the Press. It wore the comical face to the friends deploring
it, which belongs to things we do that are so very like us. They agreed
with his devoted sister, Lady Charlotte Eglett, as to the prudence of
keeping him out of England for a time, if possible.

At the first perusal of the letter, Lady Charlotte quitted her place
in Leicestershire, husband, horses, guests, the hunt, to scour across a
vacant London and pick up acquaintances under stress to be spots there
in the hunting season, with them to gossip for counsel on the subject
of "Ormont's hand-grenade," and how to stop and extinguish a second.
She was a person given to plain speech. "Stinkpot" she called it, when
acknowledging foul elements in the composition and the harm it did to
the unskilful balist. Her view of the burgess English imaged a mighty
monster behind bars, to whom we offer anything but our hand. As soon as
he gets held of that he has you; he won't let it loose with flesh on the
bones. We must offend him--we can't be man or woman without offending
his tastes and his worships; but while we keep from contact (i.e.
intercommunication) he may growl, he is harmless. Witness the many
occasions when her brother offended worse, and had been unworried, only
growled at, and distantly, not in a way to rouse concern; and at the
neat review, or procession into the City, or public display of any
sort, Ormont had but to show himself, he was the popular favourite
immediately. He had not committed the folly of writing a letter to a
newspaper then.

Lady Charlotte paid an early visit to the office of the great London
solicitor, Arthur Abner, who wielded the law as an instrument of
protection for countless illustrious people afflicted by what they stir
or attract in a wealthy metropolis. She went simply to gossip of her
brother