Throughout London town there breathed no simpler-minded man than George Harding. At College, as in after-life, he had lived with a very small set, entirely composed of men of his own degree in the world; and of any other he had the vaguest possible notion. His intellectual acquirements were great, and his reading was vast and catholic; but of men and cities he had seen literally nothing; and as, except in his annual vacation, when he could go down with his family and potter about the quietest of watering-places, he never went any where save from his home to the _Statesman_ office, and from the _Statesman_ office to his home, he was not likely to enlarge his knowledge of life. Occasionally, on a Saturday night in the season, he would get the Opera-box from the musical critic, and would take Mrs. Harding to Her Majesty's; but there his whole attention would be absorbed in contemplating the appearance and manners of the "swells,"--the one word not to be found in the dictionary which he sometimes indulged in. Slightly Radical in his opinions was George Harding; and that he was not much gratified by his observation of these specimens of the upper ten thousand, was to be traced in certain little pungencies and acerbities in his leading articles after these Opera visits. He worshipped his calling, in his own honest, simple, steadfast way, and resented, quietly but sturdily, any attempts at what he considered patronage by those of higher social rank. The leaders of his political party, recognisant of the good service done to them by Harding's pen, had, on several occasions, essayed to prove their gratitude by little set civilities: huge cards of invitation to Lady Helmsman's Saturday-evening reunions had found their way to the _Statesman's_ deep-mouthed letter-box; carriage-paid hampers of high-flavoured black game sped thither from the Highland shooting-box, where the Foreign Secretary was spending his hard-earned holiday; earliest intimation of political changes, in "confidential" covers, were conveyed there by Downing-Street messengers. But George Harding never appeared at Protocol House; his name was never seen low down amongst those of the Foreign-Office clerks and outer selvage of fashion, chronicled with such urbanity by Mr. Henchman of the _High-Life Gazette_; and no attention or flattery ever made him pander to a shuffle, or register a lie. He had a very high opinion of Churchill's talents and honour; but he knew him to be fond of praise, and, above all, greatly wanting in discretion. Harding had seen so many men full of promise fall into the dreary vortex of drink and debt and pot-house dissipation, that he had hailed with delight the innate decency and gentlemanly feeling which had kept Frank Churchill out of such dirty orgies; but now he feared lest the disinfectant might prove even worse than the disease itself; and lest the aristocratic notions, which his friend undoubtedly