re a man of family, my lad - dash it! You're a Lingon,
whatever else you may be, and I'll stand by you. I've no great interest; I'm a
poor parson. I've been forced to give up hunting; my pointers and a glass of
good wine are the only decencies becoming my station that I can allow myself.
But I'll give you my countenance - I'll stick to you as my nephew. There's no
need for me to change sides exactly. I was born a Tory, and I shall never be a
bishop. But if anybody says you're in the wrong, I shall say, My nephew is in
the right; he has turned Radical to save his country. If William Pitt had been
living now, he'd have done the same; for what did he say when he was dying? Not
O save my party! but O save my country, heaven! That was what they dinned in our
ears about Peel and the duke; and now I'll turn it round upon them. They shall
be hoist with their own petard. Yes, yes, I'll stand by you.«
    Harold did not feel sure that his uncle would thoroughly retain this
satisfactory thread of argument in the uninspired hours of the morning; but the
old gentleman was sure to take the facts easily in the end, and there was no
fear of family coolness or quarrelling on this side. Harold was glad of it. He
was not to be turned aside from any course he had chosen; but he disliked all
quarrelling as an unpleasant expenditure of energy that could have no good
practical result. He was at once active and luxurious; fond of mastery, and
good-natured enough to wish that every one about him should like his mastery;
not caring greatly to know other people's thoughts, and ready to despise them as
blockheads if their thoughts differed from his, and yet solicitous that they
should have no colourable reason for slight thoughts about him. The blockheads
must be forced to respect him. Hence, in proportion as he foresaw that his
equals in the neighbourhood would be indignant with him for his political
choice, he cared keenly about making a good figure before them in every other
way. His conduct as a landholder was to be judicious, his establishment was to
be kept up generously, his imbecile father treated with careful regard, his
family relations entirely without scandal. He knew that affairs had been
unpleasant in his youth - that there had been ugly lawsuits -