wisely -
I don't mind saying, like a prophet; and he speaks on behalf of the poor as well
as of the country. He appears to me the only public man who looks to the state
of the poor - I mean, their interests. They pay for war, and if we are to have
peace at home and strength for a really national war, the only war we can ever
call necessary, the poor must be contented. He sees that. I shall not run the
risk of angering you by writing to defend him, unless I hear of his being
shamefully mishandled, and the bearer of an old name can be of service to him. I
cannot say less, and will say no more.«
 
Everard apostrophized his absent nephew: »You jackass!«
 
I am reminded by Mr. Romfrey's profound disappointment in the youth, that it
will be repeatedly shared by many others: and I am bound to forewarn readers of
this history that there is no plot in it. The hero is chargeable with the
official disqualification of constantly offending prejudices, never seeking to
please; and all the while it is upon him the narrative hangs. To be a public
favourite is his last thought. Beauchampism, as one confronting him calls it,
may be said to stand for nearly everything which is the obverse of Byronism, and
rarely woos your sympathy, shuns the statuesque pathetic, or any kind of
posturing. For Beauchamp will not even look at happiness to mourn its absence;
melodious lamentations, demoniacal scorn, are quite alien to him. His faith is
in working and fighting. With every inducement to offer himself for a romantic
figure, he despises the pomades and curling-irons of modern romance, its shears
and its labels: in fine, every one of those positive things by whose aid, and by
some adroit flourishing of them, the nimbus known as a mysterious halo is
produced about a gentleman's head. And a highly alluring adornment it is! We are
all given to lose our solidity and fly at it; although the faithful mirror of
fiction has been showing us latterly that a too superhuman beauty has disturbed
popular belief in the bare beginnings of the existence of heroes: but this, very
likely, is nothing more than a fit of Republicanism in the nursery, and a
deposition of the leading doll for lack of variety in him. That conqueror of
circumstances will, the dullest soul may begin predicting, return on his
cock-horse to favour and authority. Meantime the exhibition of a hero whom
circumstances overcome, and who does not weep or ask