all it was a duel in self-defense: and, at all events,
divorces and duels, under any circumstances, would scarcely have excited
or authorized the storm which was now about to burst over the late
spoiled child of society. But Lord Cadurcis had been guilty of the
offense which, of all offenses, is punished most severely. Lord Cadurcis
had been overpraised. He had excited too warm an interest; and the
public, with its usual justice, was resolved to chastise him for its own
folly. There are no fits of caprice so hasty and so violent as those of
society. Cadurcis, in allusion to his sudden and singular success, had
been in the habit of saying to his intimates that he 'woke one morning
and found himself famous.' He might now observe, 'I woke one morning and
found myself infamous.' Before twenty-four hours had passed over his
duel with Lord Monteagle, he found himself branded by every journal in
London as an unprincipled and unparalleled reprobate. The public,
without waiting to think, or even to inquire after the truth, instantly
selected as genuine the most false and the most flagrant of the fifty
libellous narratives that were circulated of the transaction. Stories,
inconsistent with themselves, were all alike eagerly believed, and what
evidence there might be for any one of them, the virtuous people, by
whom they were repeated, neither knew nor cared. The public, in short,
fell into a passion with their daring, and, ashamed of their past
idolatry, nothing would satisfy them but knocking the divinity on the
head."

And this same Mr. Disraeli, whose testimony is all the more precious as
coming from a Tory celebrity, after having described the shameful
reception given by the noble House to Lord Cadurcis, when he presented
himself there after the duel, and the atrocious conduct of the stupid
populace clamoring against him outside, goes on in these terms:--

"And indeed to witness this young, and noble, and gifted creature, but a
few days back the idol of the nation, and from whom a word, a glance
even, was deemed the greatest and most gratifying distinction--whom all
orders, classes, and conditions of men had combined to stimulate with
multiplied adulation, with all the glory and ravishing delights of the
world, as it were, forced upon him--to see him thus assailed with the
savage execrations of all those vile things who exult in the fall of
every thing that is great and the abasement of every thing that is
noble, was indeed