ions with
the greatest gravity and emphasis, before a large assembly of electors,
and others convened in the Newcome Town Hall, amid the roars of applause
of the non-electors, and the bewilderment and consternation of Mr.
Potts, of the Independent, who had represented the Colonel in his paper
as a safe and steady reformer. Of course the Sentinel showed him up as
a most dangerous radical, a sepoy republican, and so forth, to the wrath
and indignation of Colonel Newcome. He a republican! he scorned the
name! He would die as he had bled many a time for his sovereign. He an
enemy of our beloved Church! He esteemed and honoured it, as he hated
and abhorred the superstitions of Rome. (Yells, from the Irish in
the crowd.) He an enemy of the House of Lords! He held it to be the
safeguard of the constitution and the legitimate prize of our most
illustrious, naval, military, and--and--legal heroes (ironical cheers).
He repelled with scorn the dastard attacks of the journal which
had assailed him; he asked, laying his hands on his heart, if as a
gentleman, an officer bearing Her Majesty's commission, he could be
guilty of a desire to subvert her empire and to insult the dignity of
her crown?

After this second speech at the Town Hall, it was asserted by a
considerable party in Newcome, that Old Tom (as the mob familiarly
called him) was a Tory, while an equal number averred that he was a
Radical. Mr. Potts tried to reconcile his statements, a work in which
I should think the talented editor of the Independent had no little
difficulty. "He knows nothing about it," poor Clive said with a sigh;
"his politics are all sentiment and kindness; he will have the poor
man paid double wages, and does not remember that the employer would be
ruined: you have heard him, Pen, talking in this way at his own table,
but when he comes out armed cap-a-pied, and careers against windmills
in public, don't you see that as Don Quixote's son I had rather the dear
brave old gentleman was at home?"

So this faineant took but little part in the electioneering
doings, holding moodily aloof from the meetings, and councils, and
public-houses, where his father's partisans were assembled.

CHAPTER LXVIII. A Letter and a Reconciliation

Miss Ethel Newcome to Mrs. Pendennis:

"Dearest Laura,--I have not written to you for many weeks past. There
have been some things too trivial, and some too sad, to write about;
some things I know I shall write of if