nt Marquess was not a man capable of understanding such
scruples. But, luckily perhaps for George and for the Church, the larger
affairs of the great House of Montfort were not administered by the
Marquess. The parliamentary influences, the ecclesiastical preferments,
together with the practical direction of minor agents to the vast and
complicated estates attached to the title, were at that time under
the direction of Mr. Carr Vipont, a powerful member of Parliament, and
husband to that Lady Selina whose condescension had so disturbed
the nerves of Frank Vance the artist. Mr. Carr Vipont governed this
vice-royalty according to the rules and traditions by which the House of
Montfort had become great and prosperous. For not only every state, but
every great seignorial House has its hereditary maxims of policy,--not
less the House of Montfort than the House of Hapsburg. Now the House of
Montfort made it a rule that all admitted to be members of the family
should help each other; that the head of the House should never, if it
could be avoided, suffer any of its branches to decay and wither into
poverty. The House of Montfort also held it a duty to foster and make
the most of every species of talent that could swell the influence or
adorn the annals of the family. Having rank, having wealth, it sought
also to secure intellect, and to knit together into solid union,
throughout all ramifications of kinship and cousinhood, each variety
of repute and power that could root the ancient tree more firmly in the
land. Agreeably to this traditional policy, Mr. Carr Vipont not only
desired that a Vipont Morley should not lose a very good thing, but that
a very good thing should not lose a Vipont Morley of high academical
distinction,-a Vipont Morley who might be a bishop. He therefore drew
up an admirable letter, which the Marquess signed,--that the Marquess
should take the trouble of copying it was out of the question,--wherein
Lord Montfort was made to express great admiration of the disinterested
delicacy of sentiment, which proved George Vipont Morley to be still
more fitted to the cure of souls; and, placing rooms at Montfort Court
at his service (the Marquess not being himself there at the moment),
suggested that George should talk the matter over with the present
incumbent of Humberston (that town was not many miles distant from
Montfort Court), who, though he had no impediment in his speech, still
never himself preached nor read