Nevil listened gravely. The soundness of the head and legs of the country he took for granted. The inflated state of the unchivalrous middle, denominated Manchester, terrified him. Could it be true that England was betraying signs of decay? and signs how ignoble! Half-a-dozen crescent lines cunningly turned, sketched her figure before the world, and the reflection for one ready to die upholding her was that the portrait was no caricature. Such an emblematic presentation of the land of his filial affection haunted him with hideous mockeries. Surely the foreigner hearing our boasts of her must compare us to showmen bawling the attractions of a Fat Lady at a fair! Swoln Manchester bore the blame of it. Everard exulted to hear his young echo attack the cotton-spinners. But Nevil was for a plan, a system, immediate action; the descending among the people, and taking an initiative, LEADING them, insisting on their following, not standing aloof and shrugging. “We lead them in war,” said he; “why not in peace? There’s a front for peace as well as war, and that’s our place rightly. We’re pushed aside; why, it seems to me we’re treated like old-fashioned ornaments! The fault must be ours. Shrugging and sneering is about as honourable as blazing fireworks over your own defeat. Back we have to go! that’s the point, sir. And as for jeering the cotton-spinners, I can’t while they’ve the lead of us. We let them have it! And we have thrice the stake in the country. I don’t mean properties and titles.” “Deuce you don’t,” said his uncle. “I mean our names, our histories; I mean our duties. As for titles, the way to defend them is to be worthy of them.” “Damned fine speech,” remarked Everard. “Now you get out of that trick of prize-orationing. I call it snuffery, sir; it’s all to your own nose! You’re talking to me, not to a gallery. ‘Worthy of them!’ Caesar wraps his head in his robe: he gets his dig in the ribs for all his attitudinizing. It’s very well for a man to talk like that who owns no more than his barebodkin life, poor devil. Tall talk’s his jewelry: he must have his dandification in bunkum. You ought to know better. Property and titles are worth having, whether you are ‘worthy of them’ or a disgrace to your class. The best way of defending them is to keep a strong fist, and take care you don’t draw your fore-foot back more than enough.” “Please propose something to be done,” said Nevil, depressed by the recommendation of that attitude. Everard proposed a fight for every privilege his class possessed. “They say,” he said, “a nobleman fighting the odds is a sight for the gods: and I wouldn’t yield an inch of ground. It’s no use calling things by fine names—the country’s ruined by cowardice. Poursuivez! I cry. Haro! at them! The biggest hart wins in the end. I haven’t a doubt about that. And I haven’t a doubt we carry the tonnage.” “There’s the people,” sighed Nevil, entangled in his uncle’s haziness. “What people?”