Darrell
was seized upon as the man wanted. It was one of those times in our
Parliamentary history when the public are out of temper with all
parties; when recognized leaders have contrived to damage themselves;
when a Cabinet is shaking, and the public neither care to destroy nor to
keep it,--a time too, when the country seemed in some danger, and
when, mere men of business held unequal to the emergency, whatever name
suggested associations of vigour, eloquence, genius rose to a premium
above its market price in times of tranquillity and tape. Without effort
of his own, by the mere force of the undercurrent, Guy Darrell was
thrown up from oblivion into note. He could not form a Cabinet,
certainly not; but he might help to bring a Cabinet together, reconcile
jarring elements, adjust disputed questions, take in such government
some high place, influence its councils, and delight a public weary
of the oratory of the day with the eloquence of a former race. For the
public is ever a _laudator temporis acti_, and whatever the authors or
the orators immediately before it, were those authors and orators Homers
and Ciceros, would still shake a disparaging head, and talk of these
degenerate days as Homer himself talked ages before Leonidas stood
in the pass of Thermopylae, or Miltiades routed Asian armaments at
Marathon. Guy Darrell belonged to a former race. The fathers of those
young members rising now into fame had quoted to their sons his pithy
sentences, his vivid images; and added, as Fox added when quoting Burke,
"But you should have heard and seen the man!"

Heard and seen the man! But there he was again! come up as from a
grave,--come up to the public just when such a man was wanted. Wanted
how? wanted where? Oh, somehow and somewhere! There he is! make the
most of him. The house in Carlton Gardens is prepared, the establishment
mounted. Thither flock all the Viponts, nor they alone; all the chiefs
of all parties, nor they alone; all the notabilities of our grand
metropolis. Guy Darrell might be startled at his own position; but he
comprehended its nature, and it did not discompose his nerves. He knew
public life well enough to be aware how much the popular favour is the
creature of an accident. By chance he had nicked the time; had he thus
come to town the season before, he might have continued obscure, a man
like Guy Darrell not being wanted then. Whether with or without
design, his bearing confirmed and extended the