However, call it a curia, or a club, or what ye will, custom had established in this mansion a meeting of all the wise heads and all the choice spirits of the hamlet. At first the members of it were very independent of all party considerations, and each was too conscious of his own individual merits to become a hanger-on of any more important potentate. Whatever subject was tabled, whether it were the Holy Alliance or the Holy Church--the taste of the new tap or the conduct of the new member--every one said what he thought, and had no idea of bowing to the opinion of his neighbour. In process of time, however, this laudable spirit of liberty and equality began, as in other places, to decline. Some of the members became idle and complaisant, others waxed mighty and overbearing; until at last the Parliament of---- became subservient to the will and wishes of a single ruler, and Jeremiah Snaggs took his place in my memorandum-book as the first Dictator. He had lived many years in the place, so that he was well known to most of its inhabitants--to some too well. He had long enjoyed the office of collector of the taxes in---- and its neighbourhood, and had contrived to grow rich, as some whispered not by the most creditable methods. However that might be, he was rich, and, as the patriarchal simplicity of the spot declined, many began to look with ill-concealed covetings upon the possessions of Jeremiah Snaggs. He had built to himself a mansion by the roadside, with a small garden in front; and there was a very extraordinary appendage to it, which excited much speculation among his unsophisticated contemporaries, and which he denominated a veranda. For some time he remained shut up in his citadel, and seemed to contemn the courtesies and repel the approaches of the inferior beings who moved around him. Afterwards, however, he found the solitude of his home (for he was a bachelor) insupportable; and he emerged gradually from his retirement, and condescended to join in the social assemblies of his neighbours. He joined them not as a fellow-citizen, but as a sovereign; he came among them, not to brighten their festivity, but to chill their good-humour; his presence was not an assistance, but a restraint. Nevertheless, he was the great man of the place, and in a short time his word was law among its inhabitants. Whether the ascendency was owing rather to the talents which he occasionally displayed, or to the dinners which he occasionally gave, I cannot say. Thomas the boatbuilder, who till now had the credit of being a staunch Whig, and the boldness to avow it, drew in his horns; his patriotism, his oratory, his zeal shrank into nothing before the fiat of the Tory bashaw. He made indeed a violent opposition when Jeremiah proposed the introduction of port wine in lieu of the malt which had hitherto been the inspiration of their counsels, and he was somewhat refractory when the dictator insisted upon