heppard," said my Lord Essex who sat on my right, "tell us
the news."

Mr. Sheppard pushed his glass forward and leaned his elbows on the
table. I could see that all that he said was directed principally at me.

"Well, my lords," he said, "I have very good news. You remember how I
told you that I was beginning to fear for the people down here--that
they would be provoked soon into some kind of a rising. They are still
not wholly pacified--" (here he shot a look at me, which he should not
have done)--"but I am doing my best to tell them that we have very good
hopes indeed that His Majesty will be persuaded to call a Parliament;
and I think they are beginning to believe me. I think we may say that
the danger is past."

"Why; what danger is that, Mr. Sheppard?" said I, very innocently.

"Why--a rising!" he said. "Has not my Lord Essex told you?"

"Ah! yes!" said I, "I had forgot." (This was wholly false. He had told
me once or twice at least that there was danger of this. This had been a
month ago; and his object had been to persuade me that they had been
telling the truth.)

"I saw some fellows as we came in," I said.

"Those are the malcontents," he said. "There are not more than a very
few now, who go about and brag."

I assented.

"By the way," said my Lord Essex to Shaftesbury who looked at him
heavily, "I spoke with my Lord Russell a week ago. You know my Lord
Russell, Mr. Mallock?"

I said that I did not.

"Well; I had hoped he would have been here to-night. But he is gone down
to the country--to Stratton--where he has his seat."

He talked a while longer of my Lord Russell; and I saw that he wished me
to believe that my Lord was of their party: whence I argued to myself
that was just what he was not; but that they wished to win him over for
the sake of his name, perhaps, and his known probity. (And, as the
event shewed, I was right in that conjecture.)

Two or three of them were still talking together in this strain, and
while I listened enough to tell me that it was nothing very important
that they said, I was observing my Lord Shaftesbury: and, upon my heart!
I was sorry for the man. Three years ago he was in the front of the
rising tide, in the full blast of popularity and power; he had so worked
upon the old Popish Plot and the mob, that he had all the movement with
him: His Majesty himself was afraid of him, and was forced to follow his
leading. Now he was fallen from all this; the Court-party