 of an
invention he claimed: the discovery of a Balance in Breeches: apparently the
philosopher's stone of the tailor craft, a secret that should ensure harmony of
outline to the person and an indubitable accommodation to the most difficult
legs.
    Since Adam's expulsion, it seemed, the tailors of this wilderness had been
in search of it. But like the doctors of this wilderness, their science knew no
specific: like the Babylonian workmen smitten with confusion of tongues, they
had but one word in common, and that word was cut. Mr. Goren contended that to
cut was not the key of the science: but to find a Balance was. An artistic
admirer of the frame of man, Mr. Goren was not wanting in veneration for the
individual who had arisen to do it justice. He spoke of his Balance with supreme
self-appreciation. Nor less so the Honourable Melville, who professed to have
discovered the Balance of Power, at home and abroad. It was a capital Balance,
but inferior to Mr. Goren's. The latter gentleman guaranteed a Balance with
motion: whereas one step not only upset the Honourable Melville's, but shattered
the limbs of Europe. Let us admit, that it is easier to fit a man's legs than to
compress expansive empires.
    Evan enjoyed the doctoring of kingdoms quite as well as the diplomatist. It
suited the latent grandeur of soul inherited by him from the great Mel. He liked
to prop Austria and arrest the Czar, and keep a watchful eye on France; but the
Honourable Melville's deep-mouthed phrase conjured up to him a pair of colossal
legs imperiously demanding their Balance likewise. At first the image scared
him. In time he was enabled to smile it into phantom vagueness. The diplomatist
diplomatically informed him, it might happen that the labours he had undertaken
might be neither more nor less than education for a profession he might have to
follow. Out of this, an ardent imagination, with the Countess de Saldar for an
interpreter, might construe a promise of some sort. Evan soon had high hopes.
What though his name blazed on a shop-front? The sun might yet illumine him to
honour!
    Where a young man is getting into delicate relations with a young woman, the
more of his sex the better - they serve as a blind; and the Countess hailed
fresh arrivals warmly. There was Sir John Loring, Dorothy's father, who had
married the eldest of the daughters of Lord Elburne. A widower, handsome, and a
flirt, he capitulated to the Countess instantly,
