England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
Mr. Bertie Tremaine, who was always studying the spirit of the age,
announced to the initiated that Mr. Vigo had something of the character
and structure of Napoleon, and that he himself began to believe, that
an insular nation, with such an enormous appetite, was not adapted
to cosmopolitan principles, which were naturally of a character more
spiritual and abstract. Mr. Bertie Tremaine asked Mr. Vigo to dinner,
and introduced him to several distinguished youths of extreme opinions,
who were dining off gold plate. Mr. Vigo was much flattered by his
visit; his host made much of him; and he heard many things on the
principles of government, and even of society, in the largest sense of
the expression, which astonished and amused him. In the course of the
evening he varied the conversation--one which became the classic library
and busts of the surrounding statesmen--by promising to most of the
guests allotments of shares in a new company, not yet launched, but
whose securities were already at a high premium.
Endymion, in the meantime, pursued the even tenor of his way. Guided
by the experience, unrivalled knowledge, and consummate tact of Lord
Roehampton, he habitually made inquiries, or brought forward motions,
which were evidently inconvenient or embarrassing to the ministry; and
the very circumstance, that he was almost always replied to by the prime
minister, elevated him in the estimation of the House as much as the
pertinence of his questions, and the accurate information on which he
founded his motions. He had not taken the House with a rush like Job
Thornberry, but, at the end of three sessions, he was a personage
universally looked upon as one who was “certain to have office.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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