Sommerset and his friends had, of course, the accredited weapons of their party wherewith to attack the adversary, and Stopford was called everything, from Radical up to Atheist. Thus the battle began, and fiercely was it fought; but suffice it to say, that all the usual means for obtaining the independent suffrage of freeborn Englishmen were put in requisition. Voters suddenly emerged from corners wherein no freeholds had been previously dreamed of; others were unaccountably absent on the polling-days; the alehouses abounded in trade, and the town in all disorderliness. There was everlasting controversy over claims of residence and ownership, with numerous appeals to our famous charter; and prosecutions for assault and battery occupied our town lawyers the whole succeeding year. What spites and quarrels are still flourishing among my old neighbours which owe their origin to that election! How many long friendships it split up, and how much family peace it disturbed, I cannot precisely state; but the like did happen. Neither is it within my memory's scope to enlarge on the Countess Dowager of Lumberdale and her seven charming daughters, in elegant morning-dresses, appearing at the poll, where they shook hands with everybody, and shewed a singular acquaintance with family history; nor to relate how Lord Littlemore, Stopford's brother-in-law, and the proudest peer in England, made calls on small shopkeepers and farmers, perhaps to shew what rank could do on important occasions. No manoeuvre was left untried by the rival factions, nor any cause of dispute omitted, and the strife increased in bitterness every day. Readers, can any of you explain why people so generally run into the way of whatever they most fear? I never could; but the case is common, and Sommerset Cloudesly was a striking instance. What waves of worry passed over him! and what heaps of annoyance were piled on his spirit during that county election!--a rather tedious business in those unreformed days. His peace was killed with cabbage-stocks on the hustings; his days were devastated by groans; and his soul harrowed by hisses. Nevertheless, both his friends and enemies were amazed to see how well Cloudesly acquitted himself; his speeches, when they could be heard, were models of neat eloquence; and his colours--pea-green and white--were sported with genteel triumph. By and by, however, it became evident to his most sanguine supporter that Sommerset had no chance; Sir Jonas and Lord Lumberdale themselves advised him to give up the contest; but the man had been persuaded that the safety of Great Tattleton, if not that of the British nation, depended on him, and a persuasion once in Sommerset's head was not easily got out. He believed on, in spite of them and fortune. I never found out precisely what the business cost him; nobody dared inquire, and he burned all the accounts; but at length the last day's poll was taken, and amid cheers, yells, and a