Mr.
Mildmay, and of being duly submissive to one whom he recognises as
his superior.

Within two minutes afterwards the Duke followed, with Plantagenet
Palliser. The Duke, as all the world knows, was the Duke of St.
Bungay, the very front and head of the aristocratic old Whigs of the
country,--a man who has been thrice spoken of as Prime Minister, and
who really might have filled the office had he not known himself to
be unfit for it. The Duke has been consulted as to the making of
Cabinets for the last five-and-thirty years, and is even now not an
old man in appearance;--a fussy, popular, clever, conscientious man,
whose digestion has been too good to make politics a burden to him,
but who has thought seriously about his country, and is one who will
be sure to leave memoirs behind him. He was born in the semi-purple
of ministerial influences, and men say of him that he is honester
than his uncle, who was Canning's friend, but not so great a man as
his grandfather, with whom Fox once quarrelled, and whom Burke loved.
Plantagenet Palliser, himself the heir to a dukedom, was the young
Chancellor of the Exchequer, of whom some statesmen thought much as
the rising star of the age. If industry, rectitude of purpose, and
a certain clearness of intellect may prevail, Planty Pall, as he is
familiarly called, may become a great Minister.

Then came Viscount Thrift by himself;--the First Lord of the
Admiralty, with the whole weight of a new iron-clad fleet upon his
shoulders. He has undertaken the Herculean task of cleansing the
dockyards,--and with it the lesser work of keeping afloat a navy that
may be esteemed by his countrymen to be the best in the world. And he
thinks that he will do both, if only Mr. Mildmay will not resign;--an
industrious, honest, self-denying nobleman, who works without ceasing
from morn to night, and who hopes to rise in time to high things,--to
the translating of Homer, perhaps, and the wearing of the Garter.

Close behind him there was a ruck of Ministers, with the
much-honoured grey-haired old Premier in the midst of them. There was
Mr. Gresham, the Foreign Minister, said to be the greatest orator
in Europe, on whose shoulders it was thought that the mantle of Mr.
Mildmay would fall,--to be worn, however, quite otherwise than Mr.
Mildmay had worn it. For Mr. Gresham is a man with no feelings
for the past, void of historical association, hardly with
memories,--living altogether for the future whi