is friend; but they part with a mere Good-bye,
they meet with a mere How-d'you-do? and they don't write to each other
in the interval. Curious, modesty, strange stoical decorum of English
friendship! "Yes, we are not demonstrative like those confounded
foreigners," says Hardman: who not only shows no friendship, but never
felt any all his life long.

"Been in Switzerland?" says Pen.

"Yes," says Warrington.

"Couldn't find a bit of tobacco fit to smoke till we came to Strasburg,
where I got some caporal." The man's mind is full, very likely, of the
great sights which he has seen, of the great emotions with which the
vast works of nature have inspired it. But his enthusiasm is too coy to
show itself, even to his closest friend, and he veils it with a cloud of
tobacco. He will speak more fully of confidential evenings, however,
and write ardently and frankly about that which he is shy of saying. The
thoughts and experience of his travel will come forth in his writings;
as the learning, which he never displays in talk, enriches his style
with pregnant allusion and brilliant illustration, colours his generous
eloquence, and points his wit.

The elder gives a rapid account of the places which he has visited in
his tour. He has seen Switzerland, North Italy, and the Tyrol--he has
come home by Vienna, and Dresden, and the Rhine. He speaks about these
places in a shy sulky voice, as if he had rather not mention them at
all, and as if the sight of them had rendered him very unhappy. The
outline of the elder man's tour thus gloomily sketched out, the
young one begins to speak. He has been in the country--very much
bored--canvassing uncommonly slow--he is here for a day or two, and
going on to--to the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells, to some friends
that will be uncommonly slow, too. How hard it is to make an Englishman
acknowledge that he is happy!

"And the seat in Parliament, Pen? Have you made it all right?" asks
Warrington.

"All right,--as soon as Parliament meets and a new writ can be issued,
Clavering retires, and I step into his shoes," says Pen.

"And under which king does Bezonian speak or die?" asked Warrington. "Do
we come out as Liberal Conservative, or as Government man, or on our own
hook?"

"Hem! There are no politics now; every man's politics, at least,
are pretty much the same. I have not got acres enough to make me a
Protectionist; nor could I be one, I think, if I had all the land in the
county. I