ny longer to conceive a muscular resolution': that 'she
is animated only as the carcase to the blow-fly'; and so forth:--charged
on him during his wrestle with his problem. And the gentlemen had said,
had permitted himself to say, that our England's recent history was a
provincial apothecary's exhibition of the battle of bane and antidote.
Mr. Durance could hardly mean it. But how could one answer him when he
spoke of the torpor of the people, and of the succeeding Governments as
a change of lacqueys--or the purse-string's lacqueys? He said, that Old
England has taken to the arm-chair for good, and thinks it her whole
business to pronounce opinions and listen to herself; and that, in the
face of an armed Europe, this great nation is living on sufferance. Oh!

Skepsey had uttered the repudiating exclamation.

'Feel quite up to it?' he was asked by his neighbour.

The mover of armed hosts for the defence of the country sat in a
third-class carriage of the train, approaching the first of the stations
on the way to town. He was instantly up to the level of an external
world, and fell into give and take with a burly broad communicative man;
located in London, but born in the North, in view of Durham cathedral,
as he thanked his Lord; who was of the order of pork-butcher; which
succulent calling had carried him down to near upon the borders of
Surrey and Sussex, some miles beyond the new big house of a Mister
whose name he had forgotten, though he had heard it mentioned by an
acquaintance interested in the gentleman's doings. But his object was to
have a look at a rare breed of swine, worth the journey; that didn't
run to fat so much as to flavour, had longer legs, sharp snouts to plump
their hams; over from Spain, it seemed; and the gentleman owning
them was for selling them, finding them wild past correction. But the
acquaintance mentioned, who was down to visit t' other gentleman's big
new edifice in workmen's hands, had a mother, who had been cook to a
family, and was now widow of a cook's shop; ham, beef, and sausages,
prime pies to order; and a good specimen herself; and if ever her son
saw her spirit at his bedside, there wouldn't be room for much else in
that chamber--supposing us to keep our shapes. But he was the right sort
of son, anxious to push his mother's shop where he saw a chance, and
do it cheap; and those foreign pigs, after a disappointment to their
importer, might be had pretty cheap, and were accounted