The new incumbent soon won “golden opinions” from rich and poor. Sir Thomas Crawley, who had wriggled himself into the new ministry, and obtained the appointment of envoy to the court of one of the German potentates--a position which he hoped would secure for him the baronetcy as a retiring pension--had taken up a superstitious notion that his success was a reward for the good action of appointing Ernest Carrington to the living of Ashburn; and in order still to propitiate the tickle goddess, he continued to heap favours upon his _protégé_, till worthy Mr. Selby, unaccustomed to such freaks of benevolence on the part of his patron, began to fear the air of Germany had produced some strange effect upon Sir Thomas’s brain. Mr. Slowkopf, too, had gradually arrived at the conviction that Mr. Carrington was “a most praiseworthy and remarkable young man,” and, once assured that he had no lingering affection for modern Teutonic heresies, he yielded himself to the-fascinations of his rector’s manner and address, and became one-of the most devoted of his admirers. Faithful to his pledge, Ernest exacted every farthing of the dilapidations to which he had a legal claim; but then he took-at a valuation Mrs. Colville’s furniture and live stock (comprising Samson the pony, an orthodox and superannuated cow, some fine old Protestant cocks and hens, the annual pig, and the perennial yard-dog, which latter individual always barked at the wrong time, _would_ go to church, and howl at the singing-psalms, whenever he could get loose, and cost rather more to feed than did his new master), and, trusting to the widow’s ignorance of business matters, contrived to pay a sum for these conveniences which made the dilapidations fall very lightly upon her pocket. Whether Mrs. Colville was more clear-sighted than he-expected, or whether his kind interference to protect Hugh from punishment, of which she heard an account from Percy, had won her heart, certain it is that the dislike with which the widow was prepared to view her lost husband’s successor, soon changed to an almost maternal regard for the young man who so well performed the duties which Mr. Colville’s death had left unfulfilled. The only person who appeared insensible to the merits of this general favourite, was the capricious little Rosebud; but she, very early in the session, seceded to the opposition benches, and constituted in her own pretty person a formidable minority of one.