When I visited Marston Hall two months ago, on my road to Penzance, matters were strangely altered in the establishment. I found the old gentleman sitting in his library with a huge bundle of printed placards before him, and a quantity of scribbled paper lying on his table. The County Meeting was in agitation; and Mr. Marston, to the astonishment of every one, had determined to take the field against bigotry and persecution. He was composing a speech. Poachers were neglected, and turnip-stealers forgotten; his favourite songs echoed unheeded, and the urn simmered in vain. He hunted authorities, he consulted references, he hammered periods into shape, he strung metaphors together like beads, he translated, he transcribed. He was determined that, if the good folk of the West remained unenlightened, the fault should not rest upon his shoulders. Every pursuit and amusement were at an end. He had been planning a new line of road through part of his estate, but the labourers were now at a standstill; and he had left off reading in the middle of the third volume of “The Disowned.” I found that Sir Walter had not dined at his table for five weeks; and when I talked of accompanying his party to the parish church on Sunday, Emily silenced me with a look, and whispered that her papa read the prayers at home now, for that Dr. Gloss was a detestable fanatic, who went about getting up petitions. Mr. Marston could talk about nothing but the Question, and the speech he meant to make upon it. “Talk of the dangers of Popery,” he said, “why old Tom Sarney, who died the other day, was a Papist; I hunted with him for ten years; never saw a man ride with better judgment. When I had that horrid tumble at Fen Brook, if Tom Sarney had not been at my side my Protestant neck would not have been worth a whistle that day. Danger, forsooth! They are Papists at Eastwood Park, you know; and, if my son’s word is to be credited, there is one pretty Catholic there who would save at least one heretic from the bonfire. My tenant Connel is a Papist; never flinches at Lady-day and Michaelmas. Lady Dryburgh is a Papist, and Dr. Gloss says she keeps a Jesuit in her house. By George, sir, she may have a worse faith than I, but she contrived to give twice as many blankets to the poor last Christmas. And so I shall tell my friends from the hustings next week.” When I observed the report of the proceedings at the County Meeting in the newspaper a fortnight afterwards, I find only that Mr. Marston “spoke amidst considerable uproar.” But I learn from private channels that his speech has been by no means thrown away. For it is quoted with much emphasis by his gamekeeper, and it occupies thirteen closely written pages in Emily’s album. THE BEST BAT IN THE SCHOOL.