Nor were less selfish doubts wanting. As he stood, caught in the press and awaiting his turn to leave the crowded House, his eyes rested on the pale, scowling faces which dotted the opposite benches; the faces of men who, honestly believing that here and now the old Constitution of England had got its deathblow, could not hide their bitter chagrin, or their scorn of the foe. Nor could he, at any rate, view those men without sympathy; without the possibility that they were right weighing on his spirits; without a faint apprehension that this might indeed be the beginning of decay, the starting point of that decadence which every generation since Queen Anne’s had foreseen. For if many on that side represented no one but themselves, they still represented vast interests, huge incomes, immense taxation. They were those who, if England sank, had most to lose. He, in the past, had given up almost his all that he might stand aloof from them; and that, because he thought them prejudiced, wrong-headed, unreasonable. But he respected them. And—what if they were right? Meanwhile the persistent cheering of his friends began to jar on his tired nerves. He seemed to see in this a beginning of disorder, of license, of revolution, of all those evils which the other party foretold. And then he had little liking for the statistics of Hume: and Hume with his arm about his favourite pillar, was high among the triumphant. Hard by him again was the tall, thin form of Orator Hunt, for whom the Bill was too moderate; and the taller, thinner form of Burdett. They, crimson with shouting, were his partners in this; the bedfellows among whom his opinions had cast him. Thinking such thoughts, he was among the last to leave the House, which he did by way of Westminster Hall. The scene as he descended to the Hall was so striking that he stood an instant on the steps to view it. The hither half of the great space was comparatively bare, but the farther half was occupied by a throng of people held back by a line of the New Police, who were doing all they could to keep a passage for the departing Members. As groups of the latter, after chatting awhile at the upper end, passed, conscious of the greatness of the occasion, down the lane thus formed, bursts of loud cheering greeted the better-known Reformers. Some of the more forward of those who waited shook hands with them, or patted them on the back; while others cried “God bless you, sir! Long life to you, sir!” On the other hand, an angry moan, or a spirit of hissing, marked the passage of a known Tory; or a voice was raised calling to these to bid the Lords beware. A few lamps, which had burned through the night, contended pallidly with the growing daylight, and gave to the scene that touch of obscurity, that mingling of light and shadow—under the dusky, far-receding roof—which is necessary to the picturesque.