mation to all these rumors did it give, when the
evening papers announced in the most striking type: Resignation of Sir
Horace Upton. If the terms in which he communicated that step to the
Premier were not before the world, the date, the very night of the
debate, showed that the resolution had been come to suddenly.

Some of the journals affected to be in the whole secret of the
transaction, and only waiting the opportune moment to announce it to the
world. The dark, mysterious paragraphs in which journalists show their
no-meanings abounded, and menacing hints were thrown out that the
country would no longer submit to.--Heaven knows what. There was,
besides all this, a very considerable amount of that catechetical
inquiry, which, by suggesting a number of improbabilities, hopes to
arrive at the likely, and thus, by asking questions where they had
a perfect confidence they would never be answered, they seemed to
overwhelm their adversaries with shame and discomfiture. The great fact,
however, was indisputable,--Upton had resigned.

To the many who looked up at the shuttered windows of his sad-looking
London house, this reflection occurred naturally enough,--How little the
poor sufferer, on his sick bed, cared for the contest that raged around
him; how far away were, in all probability, his thoughts from that world
of striving and ambition whose waves came to his door-sills. Let us,
in that privilege which belongs to us, take a peep within the curtained
room, where a bright fire is blazing, and where, seated behind a screen,
Sir Horace is now penning a note; a bland half smile rippling his
features as some pleasant conceit has flashed across his mind. We have
rarely seen him looking so well. The stimulating events of the last few
days have done for him more than all the counsels of his doctors,
and his eyes are brighter and his cheeks fuller than usual. A small
miniature hangs suspended by a narrow ribbon round his neck, and a
massive gold bracelet adorns one wrist,--"two souvenirs" which he stops
to contemplate as he writes; nor is there a touch of sorrowful
meaning in the glance he bestows upon them,--the look rather seems the
self-complacent regard that a successful general might bestow on the
decorations he had won by his valor. It is essentially vainglorious.

More than once has he paused to read over the sentence he has written,
and one may see, by the motion of his lips as he reads, how completely
he has achieved