selves, or that they had
needlessly called him from a sick bed to come to the rescue, or that
some subtle trap had been laid to ensnare him. These were vulgar
beliefs, which, if they obtained little credence in the higher region
of club-life, were extensively circulated, and not discredited, in less
distinguished circles. How they ever got abroad at all; how they found
their ways into newspaper paragraphs, terrifying timid supporters of
the ministry by the dread prospect of a "smash," exciting the hopes
of Opposition with the notion of a great secession, throwing broadcast
before the world of readers every species of speculation, all kinds of
combination,--who knows how all this happened? Who, indeed, ever
knew how things a thousand times more secret ever got wind and became
club-talk ere the actors in the events had finished an afternoon's
canter in the Park?

If, then, the world of London learned on the morning in question that
Sir Horace Upton was very ill, it also surmised--why and wherefore it
knows best--that the same Sir Horace was an ill-used man. Now, of
all the objects of public sympathy and interest, next after a foreign
emperor on a visit at Buckingham Palace, or a newly arrived hippopotamus
at the Zoological Gardens, there is nothing your British public is so
fond of as "an ill-used man." It is essential, however, to his great
success that he be ill-used in high places; that his enemies and
calumniators should have been, if not princes, at least dukes and
marquises and great dignitaries of the state. Let him only be supposed
to be martyred by these, and there is no saying where his popularity may
be carried. A very general impression is current that the mass of the
nation is more or less "ill-used,"--denied its natural claims and just
rewards. To hit upon, therefore, a good representation of this hard
usage, to find a tangible embodiment of this great injustice, is a
discovery that is never unappreciated.

To read his speech of the night before, and to peruse the ill-scrawled
bulletin of his health at the hall door in the morning, made up the
measure of his popularity, and the world exclaimed, "Think of the man
they have treated in this fashion!" Every one framed the indictment to
his own taste; nor was the wrong the less grievous that none could give
it a name. Even cautious men fell into the trap, and were heard to say,
"If all we hear be true, Upton has not been fairly treated."

What an air of confir