ery
peculiar compression of his nether lip, which was a custom he had when
anything greatly irritated or disturbed him.

"Well," said he, stopping abruptly as he saw me,--"well, considering the
peacock Harley brought so bright a plume to his own nest, we must admire
the generosity which spared this gay dunghill feather to mine!"

"How?" said I, though I knew the cause of his angry metaphor. St. John
used metaphors in speech scarcely less than in writing.

"How?" cried the new peer, eagerly, and with one of those flashing looks
which made his expression of indignation the most powerful I ever saw;
"how! Was the sacred promise granted to me of my own collateral earldom
to be violated; and while the weight, the toil, the difficulty, the
odium of affairs, from which Harley, the despotic dullard, shrank alike
in imbecility and fear, had been left exclusively to my share, an insult
in the shape of an honour to be left exclusively to my reward? You know
my disposition is not to overrate the mere baubles of ambition; you
know I care little for titles and for orders in themselves: but the most
worthless thing becomes of consequence if made a symbol of what is of
value, or designed as the token of an affront. Listen: a collateral
earldom falls vacant; it is partly promised me. Suddenly I am dragged
from the House of Commons, where I am all powerful; I am given--not this
earldom, which, as belonging to my house, would alone have induced me to
consent to a removal from a sphere where my enemies allow I had greater
influence than any single commoner in the kingdom,--I am given, not
this, but a miserable compromise of distinction, a new and an inferior
rank; given it against my will; thrust into the Upper House to defend
what this pompous driveller, Oxford, is forced to forsake; and not only
exposed to all the obloquy of a most infuriate party opposed to me,
but mortified by an intentional affront from the party which, heart and
soul, I have supported. You know that my birth is to the full as noble
as Harley's; you know that my influence in the Lower House is far
greater; you know that my name in the country, nay, throughout Europe,
is far more popular; you know that the labour allotted to me has been
far more weighty; you know that the late Peace of Utrecht is entirely my
framing, that the foes to the measure direct all their venom against
me, that the friends of the measure heap upon me all the honour: when,
therefore, this exact