The present Sir James is now a man of forty. He was at Eton and Trinity, and for a short time in the Guards. He married the daughter of a neighbouring baronet, and at the age of thirty, when his father died, settled down to the congenial occupation of a country gentleman. He is, in spite of the fact that he had a large landed estate, a very wealthy man. I imagine he has at least £20,000 a year. He has a London house, to which Lady Staunton goes for the season, but Sir James, who makes a point of accompanying her, soon finds that business necessitates his at once returning to the country; and I am not sure that the summer months, which he spends absolutely alone, are not the most agreeable part of the year for him. He has three stolid and healthy children—two boys and a girl. He takes no interest whatever in politics, religion, literature, or art. He takes in the _Standard_ and the _Field_. He hunts a little, and shoots a little, but does not care about either. He spends his morning and afternoon in pottering about the estate. In the evening he writes a few letters, dines well, reads the paper and goes to bed. He does not care about dining out; indeed the prospect of a dinner-party or a dance clouds the pleasure of the day. He goes to church once on Sunday; he is an active magistrate; he has, at long intervals, two or three friends of like tastes to stay with him, who accompany him, much to his dislike, in his perambulations, and stand about whistling, or staring at stacks and cattle, while he talks to the bailiff. But he is a kindly, cheery, generous man, with a good head for business, and an idea of his position. He is absolutely honourable and straightforward, and faces an unpleasant duty, when he has made up his mind to it, with entire tranquillity. No mental speculation has ever come in his way; at school he was a sound, healthy boy, good at games, who did his work punctually, and was of blameless character. He made no particular friends; sat through school after school, under various sorts of masters, never inattentive, and never interested. He had a preference for dull and sober teachers, men with whom, as he said, “you knew where you were;” a stimulating teacher bewildered him,—“always talking about poetry and rot.” At Cambridge it was the same. He rowed in his College boat; he passed the prescribed examinations; he led a clean healthy decorous life; and no idea, small or great, no sense of beauty, no wonder at the scheme of things, ever entered his head. If by chance he ever found himself in the company of an enthusiastic undergraduate, whose mind and heart were full of burning, incomplete, fantastic thoughts, James listened politely to what he had to say, hazarded no statements, and said, in quiet after-comment, “Gad, how that chap does jaw!” No one ever thought him stupid; he knew what was going on; he was sociable, kind, not the least egotistical, and far too much of a gentleman to exhibit the least complacency in his