We all believed that Palladium of Tattleton to be kept somewhere in the church, and generations had returned their representatives according to its provisions. But the bounds of the borough were so devious, and the free burghers so thinly scattered among us, that all elections within the memory of man had been quietly managed by the mayor, the town-clerk, and the sheriff. Moreover, an old gateway and two crazy posts had something to do in the business by right of ancient custom. In short, Tattleton was what the advocates of the whole Bill were apt to term a close and sometimes a rotten borough. Its representation had become hereditary--some said, since the Long Parliament--in the Stopford family, who owned at least half the soil, and were supposed to be as old as its charter. One of their ancestors had built the church, another wore the armour and captured the banners that hung in it. The family pew and vault were there; and they had been squires and justices of peace from father to son, dispensing hospitality, work, and law, at their seat of Fern Hall--a great old manor-house, standing deep in a thickly-wooded dell not half a mile from Tattleton. So far as I could learn, the Stopfords had given no ornaments to state or church, but theirs was pre-eminently a safe house. Its martlets were generally fortunate in their connections; and its chiefs had supported the character of moderate reformers, each in his generation. At home, they were lenient magistrates and prudent landlords, never overtaxing their tenantry, and rarely enforcing the game-laws. None of them ever took a first step; but all improvements in the neighbourhood, if once commenced, were certain of their countenance; and in parliament they always voted for any measure of reform which it was evident the people would want no longer. It was, therefore, in accordance with family principles and practice, that the then reigning squire and M. P., Levison Stopford, Esquire, should take his seat on the ministerial benches, and vote in and out of parliament for the Bill with which all England rang. Levison Stopford did not make brilliant speeches, but he had a fair share of prominence in county business, was a middling landlord, a respectable head of a family, connected by marriage with a Whig peer, the father of a promising son, and, as the newspapers said, four lovely daughters. All these recommendations to public favour could not secure him against division in his native borough. There were Conservatives among us, who clung to the time-honoured institutions of Tattleton, and could not consent to see their ancient privileges, charter, old posts, and all, submerged in those of two adjoining boroughs--Little Tattleton, whose constituency consisted of the beadle, and Lumberdale, to which the earl always nominated his second son; for people already understood, that on the passing of the Bill these three should become one, at least in elections.