 the right
moment, about the hour when the old standfasts, who have simply been doing duty,
return, poor jog-trot fellows, and a complimentary motto or two is the utmost
she can present to them. On the other hand, it is true she gives her first
loves, those early birds, fully to understand that a change has come in their
island mother's mind. If there is a balance to be righted, she leaves that
business to society, and if it be the season for the gathering of society, it
will be righted more or less; and if no righting is done at all, perhaps the
Press will incidentally toss a leaf of laurel on a name or two: thus in the
exercise of grumbling doing good.
    With few exceptions, Nevil Beauchamp's heroes received the motto instead of
the sweetmeat. England expected them to do their duty; they did it, and she was
not dissatisfied, - nor should they be. Beauchamp, at a distance from the scene,
chafed with customary vehemence, concerning the unjust measure dealt to his
favourites: Captain Hardist, of the Diomed, twenty years a captain, still a
captain! Young Michell denied the cross! Colonel Evans Cuff, on the heights from
first to last, and not advanced a step! But Prancer, and Plunger, and Lammakin
were thoroughly well taken care of, this critic of the war wrote savagely,
reviving an echo of a queer small circumstance occurring in the midst of the
high dolour and anxiety of the whole nation, and which a politic country
preferred to forget, as we will do, for it was but an instance of strong family
feeling in high quarters; and is not the unity of the country founded on the
integrity of the family sentiment? Is it not certain, which the master tells us,
that a line is but a continuation of a number of dots? Nevil Beauchamp was for
insisting that great Government officers had paid more attention to a dot or two
than to the line. He appeared to be at war with his country after the peace. So
far he had a lively ally in his uncle Everard; but these remarks of his were a
portion of a letter, whose chief burden was the request that Everard Romfrey
would back him in proposing for the hand of a young French lady, she being,
Beauchamp smoothly acknowledged, engaged to a wealthy French marquis, under the
approbation of her family. Could mortal folly outstrip a petition of that sort?
And apparently, according to the wording and emphasis of the letter, it was the
mature age of the marquis
