Mr. Griffenbottom was a heavy hale man, over sixty, somewhat inclined to be corpulent, with a red face, and a look of assured impudence about him which nothing could quell or diminish. The kind of life which he had led was one to which impudence was essentially necessary. He had done nothing for the world to justify him in assuming the airs of a great man,--but still he could assume them, and many believed in him. He could boast neither birth, nor talent, nor wit,--nor, indeed, wealth in the ordinary sense of the word. Though he had worked hard all his life at the business to which he belonged, he was a poorer man now than he had been thirty years ago. It had all gone in procuring him a seat in Parliament. And he had so much sense that he never complained. He had known what it was that he wanted, and what it was that he must pay for it. He had paid for it, and had got it, and was, in his fashion, contented. If he could only have continued to have it without paying for it again, how great would have been the blessing! But he was a man who knew that such blessings were not to be expected. After the first feeling of disgust was over on the receipt of Trigger's letter, he put his collar to the work again, and was prepared to draw his purse,--intending, of course, that the new candidate should bear as much as possible of this drain. He knew well that there was a prospect before him of abject misery;--for life without Parliament would be such to him. There would be no salt left for him in the earth if he was ousted. And yet no man could say why he should have cared to sit in Parliament. He rarely spoke, and when he did no one listened to him. He was anxious for no political measures. He was a favourite with no section of a party. He spent all his evenings at the House, but it can hardly be imagined that those evenings were pleasantly spent. But he rubbed his shoulders against the shoulders of great men, and occasionally stood upon their staircases. At any rate, such as was the life, it was his life; and he had no time left to choose another. He considered himself on this occasion pretty nearly sure to be elected. He knew the borough and was sure. But then there was that accursed system of petitioning, which according to his idea was un-English, ungentlemanlike, and unpatriotic--"A stand-up fight, and if you're licked--take it." That was his idea of what an election should be.