declared that Mr Graham had beaten Mr Stamford by thirty-eight votes, and when Mr Stamford’s committee thereupon demanded a scrutiny, Mr Graham’s heart sank within him. His father had with difficulty been prevailed upon to sanction his entering into the contest at all. The funds at his disposal were quite exhausted, and here was the battle to be fought over again. But who, having committed himself to such a struggle, ever willingly withdrew from it? Mr Graham did not; and at the end of a month he was pronounced member for Hull, with a debt of £6000 hanging like a millstone upon his back. The lesson thus taught him at the outset of his career Mr Graham never afterwards forgot. He was fortunate enough to raise the money at interest, without calling upon his father for a shilling; but he registered a vow to rush no more blindfold into scrapes of the kind; and he kept it, in spite of many a strong inducement in after-times to the contrary. Mr Graham took his seat on the third Opposition bench, behind his relative Lord Archibald Hamilton. Near him sat Mr E. Ellice (the Bear), Sir Robert Wilson, and Mr F. E. Kennedy; below him, Sir Francis Burdett, Mr Hume, and Lord Althorpe. It was a goodly association, and it produced its legitimate results. The war of parties soon began; and in March 1819, scarcely a month after he had taken his seat, the young member delivered his maiden speech. It proved a signal failure. Abounding in platitudes, and spoken with the air and in the tone of an exquisite, it scarcely commanded the attention of the House for a moment, and was brought to a close amid that buzz of general conversation which, more surely than any violent outcry of dissent, marks the disinclination of the Commons of England to be instructed. Mr Graham felt that his shot had missed, yet he by no means lost heart. He believed that the causes of the failure might be equally shared between himself and the House, and he determined to try again and again till he should compel the attention which was now denied him. Meanwhile, he sought comfort under the disappointment in a connection which proved to be the source, to him, of the purest happiness through life. On the 8th of July 1819 he married Fanny Callander, one of the loveliest women whom England, fertile in beauty, had ever produced. She was the daughter of Colonel Sir James Callander, afterwards Campbell of Arkinglas, and the aunt, as we need hardly stop to observe, of the still beautiful and highly-gifted Mrs Norton.