 Bethesda Spa, threatened to give the whole affair a blasphemous aspect. Even
Sir Maximus Debarry, who was to have an unprecedented return for the thousands
he would lay out on a pump-room and hotel, regarded the thing as a little too
new, and held back for some time. But the persuasive powers of the young lawyer,
Mr Matthew Jermyn, together with the opportune opening of a stone-quarry,
triumphed at last; the handsome buildings were erected, an excellent guide-book
and descriptive cards, surmounted by vignettes, were printed, and Treby Magna
became conscious of certain facts in its own history, of which it had previously
been in contented ignorance.
    But it was all in vain. The Spa, for some mysterious reason, did not
succeed. Some attributed the failure to the coal-mines and the canal, others to
the peace, which had had ruinous effects on the country, and others, who
disliked Jermyn, to the original folly of the plan. Among these last was Sir
Maximus himself, who never forgave the too persuasive attorney: it was Jermyn's
fault not only that a useless hotel had been built, but that he, Sir Maximus,
being straitened for money, had at last let the building, with the adjacent land
lying on the river, on a long lease, on the supposition that it was to be turned
into a benevolent college, and had seen himself subsequently powerless to
prevent its being turned into a tape manufactory - a bitter thing to any
gentleman, and especially to the representative of one of the oldest families in
England.
    In this way it happened that Treby Magna gradually passed from being simply
a respectable market-town - the heart of a great rural district, where the trade
was only such as had close relations with the local landed interest - and took
on the more complex life brought by mines and manufactures, which belong more
directly to the great circulating system of the nation than to the local system
to which they have been superadded; and in this way it was that Trebian Dissent
gradually altered its character. Formerly it had been of a quiescent, well-to-do
kind, represented architecturally by a small, venerable, dark-pewed chapel,
built by Presbyterians, but long occupied by a sparse congregation of
Independents, who were as little moved by doctrinal zeal as their church-going
neighbours, and did not feel themselves deficient in religious liberty, inasmuch
as they were not hindered from occasionally slumbering in their pews, and were
not obliged to go regularly to the weekly prayer-meeting. But when stone-pits
and
