nce, stimulates and gratifies curiosity. His house too was
open to foreigners of celebrity, without reference to their political
parties or opinions. Every one was welcome except absolute assassins.
The host too had studied the art of developing character and
conversation, and if sometimes he was not so successful in this respect
as he deserved, there was no lack of amusing entertainment, for in these
social encounters Mr. Bertie Tremaine was a reserve in himself, and if
nobody else would talk, he would avail himself of the opportunity of
pouring forth the treasures of his own teeming intelligence. His various
knowledge, his power of speech, his eccentric paradoxes, his pompous
rhetoric, relieved by some happy sarcasm, and the obvious sense, in all
he said and did, of innate superiority to all his guests, made these
exhibitions extremely amusing.

"What Bertie Tremaine will end in," Endymion would sometimes say,
"perplexes me. Had there been no revolution in 1832, and he had entered
parliament for his family borough, I think he must by this time have
been a minister. Such tenacity of purpose could scarcely fail. But he
has had to say and do so many odd things, first to get into parliament,
and secondly to keep there, that his future now is not so clear. When
I first knew him, he was a Benthamite; at present, I sometimes seem to
foresee that he will end by being the leader of the Protectionists and
the Protestants."

"And a good strong party too," said Trenchard, "but query whether strong
enough?"

"That is exactly what Bertie Tremaine is trying to find out."

Mr. Bertie Tremaine's manner in receiving his guests was courtly and
ceremonious; a contrast to the free and easy style of the time. But it
was adopted after due reflection. "No man can tell you what will be the
position he may be called upon to fill. But he has a right to assume
he will always be ascending. I, for example, may be destined to be
the president of a republic, the regent of a monarchy, or a sovereign
myself. It would be painful and disagreeable to have to change one's
manner at a perhaps advanced period of life, and become liable to the
unpopular imputation that you had grown arrogant and overbearing. On the
contrary, in my case, whatever my elevation, there will be no change.
My brother, Mr. Tremaine Bertie, acts on a different principle. He is a
Sybarite, and has a general contempt for mankind, certainly for the mob
and the middle class, but he