that the chances
were all against him, in spite of his advantage of a seat. That he
could not combine the two, beginning with Parliament, he did believe.
Which should it be? That was the question which he tried to decide
as he walked home from Bedford Square to Great Marlborough Street.
He could not answer the question satisfactorily, and went to bed an
unhappy man.

He must at any rate go to Lord Brentford's dinner on Wednesday, and,
to enable him to join in the conversation there, must attend the
debates on Monday and Tuesday. The reader may perhaps be best made to
understand how terrible was our hero's state of doubt by being told
that for awhile he thought of absenting himself from these debates,
as being likely to weaken his purpose of withdrawing altogether from
the House. It is not very often that so strong a fury rages between
party and party at the commencement of the session that a division
is taken upon the Address. It is customary for the leader of the
opposition on such occasions to express his opinion in the most
courteous language, that his right honourable friend, sitting
opposite to him on the Treasury bench, has been, is, and will be
wrong in everything that he thinks, says, or does in public life; but
that, as anything like factious opposition is never adopted on that
side of the House, the Address to the Queen, in answer to that most
fatuous speech which has been put into her Majesty's gracious mouth,
shall be allowed to pass unquestioned. Then the leader of the House
thanks his adversary for his consideration, explains to all men how
happy the country ought to be that the Government has not fallen into
the disgracefully incapable hands of his right honourable friend
opposite; and after that the Address is carried amidst universal
serenity. But such was not the order of the day on the present
occasion. Mr. Mildmay, the veteran leader of the liberal side of the
House, had moved an amendment to the Address, and had urged upon the
House, in very strong language, the expediency of showing, at the
very commencement of the session, that the country had returned
to Parliament a strong majority determined not to put up with
Conservative inactivity. "I conceive it to be my duty," Mr. Mildmay
had said, "at once to assume that the country is unwilling that the
right honourable gentlemen opposite should keep their seats on the
bench upon which they sit, and in the performance of that duty I am
called upon to d