well within the brief interval of less than a year, as indicating the course which he had determined to follow. But a check came. The electors of St Ives were not at all satisfied with their new member. They presented a petition early in 1821 against Mr Graham’s return, and Mr Graham, rather than incur the certain expense and hazard of a scrutiny, resigned his seat. Mortified as he was at finding himself thus excluded from public life, Mr Graham possessed too good a digestion to let the circumstance prey upon his spirits. His home was then, as it continued to be to the last, the chief scene of his happiness; and the birth of his first-born son, on the 7th of April 1820, shed additional light over the domestic circle. It suited neither his means nor his tastes to reside in London as an idler; he therefore retired into Cumberland, and, settling down at Crofthead, the unpretending house to which he had carried his beautiful bride, he threw himself with all his energies into country pursuits. It was high time that he should. His father, an easy-going and generous man, had never looked after his affairs as became him. He put himself entirely into the hands of an agent, from whom he exacted no accounts, and who did with the rents of the large estate of Netherby pretty much as he pleased. The consequence was that farms and farm-buildings went to ruin. Payments on account were all that the landlord received, and tenants got into arrear so far that recovery was impossible. With some difficulty Mr Graham prevailed upon his father to transfer the management of the property to him, and the work of practical reform began. But the extent of the difficulties with which he had to grapple may be guessed at, when we say that encumbrances to the amount of not less than £120,000 lay like a dead weight upon Netherby.