Of another and greater personage whose life touched Arthur Vaughan’s once and twice, and of whom, with all his faults, it was never said by his worst enemy that he feared responsibility or shunned the post of danger, a brief word must suffice. If Lord Brougham did not live to see that complete downfall of the great Whig houses which he had predicted, he lived to see their power ruinously curtailed. He lived to see their influence totter under the blow which the Repeal of the Corn Laws dealt the landed interest, he lived to see the Reform Bill of 1867, he lived almost to see the _coup de grâce_ given to their leadership by the Ballot Act. And in another point his prophecy came true. As it had been with Burke and Sheridan and Tierney, it was with him. His faults were great, as his merits were transcendent; and presently in the time of his need his highborn associates remembered only the former. They took advantage of them to push him from power; and he spent nearly forty years, the remnant of his long life, in the cold shade of Opposition. The most brilliant, the most versatile, and the most remarkable figure of the early days of the century, whose trumpet voice once roused England as it has never been roused from that day to this, and whose services to education and progress are acknowledged but slightly even now, paid for the phenomenal splendour of his youth by long years spent in a changed and changing world, jostled by a generation forgetful or heedless of his fame. To us he is but the name of a carriage; remembered otherwise, if at all, for his part in Queen Caroline’s trial. While Wetherell, that stout fighter, Tory of the Tories, witty, slovenly, honest man, whose fame was once in all mouths, whose caricature was once in all portfolios, and whose breeches made the fortune of many a charade, is but the shadow of a name. * * * * * The year had waned and waxed, and it was June again. At Stapylton the oaks were coming to their full green; the bracken was lifting its million heads above the sod, and by the edge of the Garden Pool the water voles sat on the leaves of the lilies and clean their fur. Arthur Vaughan—strolling up and down with his father-in-law, not without an occasional glance at Mary, recumbent on a seat on the lawn—looked grave. “I fancy,” he said presently, “that we shall learn the fate of the Bill to-day.” “Very like, very like,” Sir Robert answered, in an offhand fashion, as if the subject were not to his taste. And he turned about and by the aid of his stick expounded his plan for enlarging the flower garden. But Vaughan returned to the subject. “If not to-day, to-morrow,” he said. “And that being so, I’ve wanted for some time, sir, to ask you what you wish me to do.” “To do?” “As to the seat at Chippinge.” Sir Robert’s face expressed his annoyance. “I told you—I told you long ago,” he replied, “that I should never interfere with your political movements.”