It was a cabinet council; they were met in Lady Dorothea's boudoir, Martin and Mr. Repton being summoned to her presence. A letter had that morning reached her Ladyship from a very high quarter; the writer was the Marquis of Reckington, a very distant connection, who had suddenly been graciously pleased, after a long interval of utter obliviousness, to remember that Lady Dorothea was his relative, and yet living! Whatever pride her Ladyship might have summoned to her aid to repel the slights or impertinences of the vulgar, she displayed a most Christian forgiveness as she broke the seal of an epistle from one who had left several of her own without answers, and even replied to her application for a staff appointment for her son, by a cold assurance that these were times when “nothing but fitness and superior qualifications entitled any man to advancement in the public service.” Oh dear, were there ever any other times since the world was made! Is not merit the only passport to place, and high desert and capacity the sole recommendation to favor? Of all the immense advantages of a representative government, is there any more conspicuous than the unerring certainty with which men of ability rise to eminence without other aid than their own powers; and that, in a system like ours, family influence, wealth, name, connections, and parliamentary support are just so much mere dross? If any one be incredulous of the virtue of public men, let him only ask for a place; let him entreat his great friend--everybody has at least one great friend--mine is a coroner--to make him a Junior Lord, or a Vice-Something, and see what the answer will be. Polite, certainly; nothing more so; but what a rebuke to self-seeking!--what a stern chastisement to the ignorant presumption that places are awarded by means of favor, or that the public service is ever filled through the channels of private influence! Far from it. He is told that our age is an incorruptible one, that ministers pass sleepless nights in balancing the claims of treasury clerks, and that Lord Chancellors suffer agonies in weighing the merits of barristers of six years' standing. “We have but one rule for our guidance: the best man in the best place.” A high-sounding maxim, which it would be excessively uncivil to disparage by asking what constitutes “a best man.” Is he some unscrupulous partisan, who first gave his fortune, and afterwards his fame, to the support of a party? Is he the indisputable disposer of three, or perhaps four votes in the House? Is he a floating buoy to be anchored in either roadstead of politics, and only to be secured to either, for a consideration? Is he the dangerous confidant of some damaging transaction? Or is he the deserter from a camp, where his treason may sow disaffection? These several qualifications have ere this served to make up “a best man;” and strangely enough, are gifts which fit him for the Army, the Navy, the Home Service, or the Colonies.