--was perfect. It was massive and
well-fitting. As for the servants, a master of the horse could not have
detected an inaccurate fold in their cravats, nor a crease in their silk
stockings. Let the world be as critical or slighting as it may, these
things are successes. They are trifles only to him who has not attempted
them. Neither is it true to say that money can command them; for there
is much in them that mere money cannot do. There is a keeping in all
details,--a certain "tone" throughout, and, above all, a discipline the
least flaw in which would convert a solemn display into a mockery.

Neighbors might criticise the propriety or canvass the taste of so much
ostentation, but none, not the most sarcastic or scrutinizing, could say
one word against the display itself; and so, when on a certain forenoon
the dense crowd of the market-place scattered and fled right and left to
make way for the prancing leaders of that haughty equipage, the sense of
admiration overcame even the unpleasant feeling of inferiority, and that
flunkeyism that has its hold on humanity felt a sort of honor in being
hunted away by such magnificence.

Through the large square--or Diamond, as the Northerns love to call
it--of the town they came, upsetting apple-stalls and crockery-booths,
and frightening old peasant women, who, with a goose under one arm and
a hank of yarn under the other, were bent on enterprises of barter and
commerce. Sir Arthur drove up to the bank, of which he was the governor,
and on whose steps, to receive him, now stood the other members of
the board. With his massive gold watch in hand, he announced that the
fourteen miles had been done in an hour and sixteen minutes, and pointed
to the glossy team, whose swollen veins stood out like whipcord, to
prove that there was no distress to the cattle. The board chorused
assent, and one--doubtless an ambitious man--actually passed his hand
down the back sinews of a wheeler, and said, "Cool as spring-water, I
pledge my honor." Sir Arthur smiled benignly, looked up at the sky, gave
an approving look at the sun as though to say, "Not bad for Ireland,"
and entered the bank.

It was about five o'clock in the same evening when the great man again
appeared at the same place; he was flushed and weary-looking. Some
rebellious spirits--is not the world full of them?--had dared to oppose
one of his ordinances. They had ventured to question some subsidy that
he would accord or refuse to so