Various

“ I am not a vain man; so that I shall not here reprint the panegyric passed upon myself, or the ovation which my friend foresaw. Indeed, I am so far from vain, that I really began to think, while perusing the columns of the Patriot, that I had somewhat foolishly shut my eyes hitherto to the greatness of that talent, and the brilliancy of those parts which were now proclaimed to the world. Yes! it was quite clear that I had hitherto been concealing my candle under a bushel—that I was cut out by nature for a legislator—and that I was the very man for the Dreepdaily electors. ”

“ Yet I could not bring myself all at once to think so ill of Ormiston. He had always been considered in pecuniary matters liberal almost to a fault; that he really loved Mary Russell, I felt more than ever persuaded; and, at my age, it was hard to believe that a few thousand pounds could affect any man’s decision in such a point, even for a moment. ”

“ Yes—there could be no doubt about it—I was in the presence of the tremendous junta of Dreepdaily; the veil of Isis had been lifted up, and the principal figure upon the pedestal was the magnanimous and independent Gills. Always a worshipper of genius, I began to entertain a feeling little short of veneration towards Toddy Tam. The admirable manner in which he had contrived to conceal his real power from the public—his assumed indignation and horror of the Clique—and his hold over all classes of the electors, demonstrated him at once to be a consummate master of the political art. ”

“ With joyful intrepidity he accepted and adopted Balthasar’s scheme.
“Bravo!” cried the manager; “you shall have no cause to repent. You behold in me a sample of your future courtiers; and since honours and dignities are to be distributed, it is with me, if you please, that we will begin. In this request I act up to the spirit of my part. A courtier should always be asking for something, should lose no opportunity, and should profit by his rivals’ absence to obtain the best place. I entreat your Highness to have the goodness to name me prime minister.” ”

“ You know I lead no life of self-indulgence; and the necessary expenses, even as a gentleman-commoner, are less than you would suppose, unless you had tried matters as closely as I have.”
“And with your talents—” said I.
“My talents! I am conscious of but one talent at present: the faculty of feeling acutely the miserable position into which I have been forced. No, if you mean that I am to gain any sort of distinction by hard reading, it is simply what I cannot do. Depend upon it, Hawthorne, a man must have a mind tolerably at ease to put forth any mental exertion to good purpose. ”

“ It was an agreeable surprise, and the Grand Duke had all the credit of an idea suggested to him by his prime minister.
The whole day was passed in rambling through the beautiful forest of Rauberzell. The Princess was charming; nothing could exceed the high-breeding of the courtiers, or the fascination and elegance of the ladies; and Prince Maximilian warmly congratulated the Grand Duke on having a court composed of such agreeable and accomplished persons. Baroness Pippinstir declared, in a moment of enthusiasm, that the court of Saxe-Tolpelhausen was not to compare with that of Niesenstein. ”

“ This struck me forcibly in Smith’s case. Poor fellow! with an excellent heart and a great deal of sound common sense, he had neither the breeding nor the talent to make a gentleman of. I doubt if an university education was any real boon to him. It insured him four years of hard work—harder, perhaps, than if he had sat at a desk all the time—without the society of any of his own class and habits, and with the prospect of very little remuneration ultimately. I think he might have been very happy in his own sphere, and I do not see how he could be happy at Oxford. ”

“ Very few men’s acquaintance is worth the pains of bumping all the way down-stairs and spraining an ankle for: and for a gentleman who voluntarily confines himself to his own apartment and avoids society, to have another party chummed in upon him perforce, day and night, sitting in an arm-chair, with a suppressed groan occasionally, and an abominable smell of hartshorn—is, to say the least of it, not the happiest mode of hinting to him the evils of solitude. ”

“ It is only towards evening that the seniors appear. Then you may find them either congregated on the bridge discussing politics and polemics, or lounging in the little square in affectionate vicinity to the public-house, or leaning over the windows in their shirt-sleeves, in the tranquil enjoyment of a pipe. In short, the cares and the bustle of the world, even in this railroad age, seem to have fallen lightly on the pacific burghers of Dreepdaily. ”

“ Have you any idea who that fresh gentleman-commoner is?” said I to Savile, who was sitting next to me at dinner, one day soon after the beginning of term. We had not usually in the college above three or four of that privileged class, so that any addition to their table attracted more attention than the arrival of the vulgar herd of freshmen to fill up the vacancies at our own. Unless one of them had choked himself with his mutton, or taken some equally decided mode of making himself an object of public interest, scarcely any man of “old standing” would have even inquired his name. ”

“ And living day by day within reach of that close companionship which similarity of age, pursuits, and tastes, strengthened by daily intercourse, was cementing all around him, Charles Russell, in his twentieth year, in a position to choose his own society, and qualified to shine in it, seemed to have deliberately adopted the life of a recluse. ”

“ Humiliation, more or less, is a penalty which poverty must always pay. These humbler offices in the University were founded by a charity as wise as benevolent, which has afforded to hundreds of men of talent, but of humble means, an education equal to that of the highest noble in the land, and, in consequence, a position and usefulness in after life which otherwise they could never have hoped for. ”

“ I thought it due to myself, as all young men do, to get up to town for a week or two if possible; and being lucky enough to have an old aunt occupying a very dark house, much too large for her, and who, being rather a prosy personage, a little deaf, and very opinionated, and therefore not a special object of attraction to her relations (her property was merely a life-interest) , was very glad to get any one to come and see her—I determined to pay a visit, in which the score of obligations would be pretty equally balanced on both sides. ”

“ Conversation was briskly kept up amid the usual fire of pun, repartee, anecdote, politics, toasts, healths, jokes, broad laughter, erudite disquisitions upon the vintage of the wines they were drinking, and an occasional song. Towards twelve o’clock, when it might be observed that they emptied their glasses with less symptoms of palating the quality of what they quaffed, and filled them again with less anxiety as to which bottle or decanter they laid hold of, they gradually waxed moral and tender; sensibility began to ooze out; “Poor George Fortescue!” ”

“ And so the old housekeeper did come down, and Mary with her; and under such guardianship, a brother and an old servant, was that fair girl installed within the perilous precincts of the University of Oxford; perilous in more senses than one, as many a speculative and disappointed mamma can testify, whose daughters, brought to market at the annual “show” at commemoration, have left uncaught those dons of dignity, and heirs-apparent of property, whom they ought to have caught, and caught those well-dressed and good-looking, but undesirable young men, whom they ought not to have caught. ”

“ It is a sad thing to have a mind and body that are no match for each other. Jacob’s outward man would have been highly gratified at the exhibition of these things, but the spirit of the parson was too mighty within, and spurned every offer, and the body was compelled to obey. So the horse that was borrowed of the squire was ordered out, and Jacob Philpot mounted and rode on his way in excessive irritation, growling vehemently at the insult and indignity which had been committed against the “cloth” in general, and his own person in particular. ”

“ The elder Smith’s great ambition—indeed it was his only ambition—for the prosperity of the bank itself he looked upon as a law of nature, which did not admit of the feeling of hope, as being a fixed and immutable certainty—his ambition was to bring up his son as a gentleman. Mr Russell would have given him a stool and a desk, and he might have aspired hereafter to his father’s situation, which would have assured him £250 per annum. ”

“ The months rolled on, and cold December came with all its cheering round of kindly greetings and merry hospitalities; and with it came a softened recollection of the fate of poor Fortescue; eleven of the twelve assembled on the last day of the year, and it was impossible not to feel their loss as they sat down to dinner. The very irregularity of the table, five on one side, and only four on the other, forced the melancholy event upon their memory. ”

“ To see the prince and his sister, I need not stir hence. One of these despatches announces their early arrival at Karlstadt. They are on their way hither. On their return from a journey into Prussia, they pass through my territories and pause in my capital, inviting themselves as my guests for two or three days. Their visit is my ruin. What will they think of me when they find me alone, deserted, in my empty palace? Do you suppose the Princess will be tempted to share my dismal solitude? Last year she went to Saxe-Tolpelhausen. ”

“ Thank Heaven! even if Mary did ever care for him, she is not the girl to break her heart for a man who proves so unworthy of her regard. But why he should insist on inflicting his visits upon us now, is what I cannot make out; and what I will not endure.”
I listened with grief and surprise. I knew well that not even the strong prejudice which I believed Russell to have always felt against Ormiston, would tempt him to be guilty of misrepresentation; and, again, I gave him credit for too much penetration to have been easily deceived. ”

“ You used to tell me, Bob, that credit was the next best thing to capital. Now, I don’t despair of redeeming my capital yet, if I can only keep up my credit.”
“Right, undoubtedly, as you generally are. Do you know, Dunshunner, you deserve credit for your notions on political economy. But how is that to be done? Everybody is realising; the banks won’t discount; and when your bills become due, they will be, to a dead certainty, protested.” ”

“ If, indeed, he be a decidedly clever man, and has the opportunity early in his career of showing himself to be such, then there is good sense and good feeling enough—let us say, to the honour of the University, there is sufficient of that [Pg 83] true esprit du corps, a real consciousness of the great objects for which men are thus brought together—to insure the acknowledgment from all but the most unworthy of its members, that a scholar is always a gentleman. ”

“ Mrs Philpot received her lord and nominal master in no very gracious mood, and said she should like to know where he had been riding. “That’s more than I can tell you,” replied Jacob; “however, I know I’m as hungry as a greyhound, though I never made a better dinner in my life.”—“More shame for you,” said Mrs Philpot; “I wish the Old Boar was a thousand miles off.”—“What’s the woman talking about?” quoth Jacob. “Eh! what! at it again, I suppose,” and he pointed to the closet containing the rum bottle. “Hush!” cried Mrs Philpot, “here’s the parson coming down-stairs!”—“The parson!” ”

“ The host of the rampant Red Lion considered these things at first as a sort of joke, which he had no doubt, from such good customers, was exceedingly good, though he could not exactly comprehend it; but when Peter Brown answered to the name of George Syms, and George Syms responded to that of Peter Brown, he was somewhat more bewildered, and could not help thinking that his guests had drunk quite enough. He, however, satisfied himself with the reflection that that was no business of his, and that “a man must live by his trade.” ”

“ I crave your Highness’s pardon; you use a word I do not understand. It seems to me that, in every good German government, that which is absolutely necessary is necessarily legal. That is my policy. Moreover, as prime minister, I am responsible. What would you have more? It is plain that, if we leave your courtiers their liberty, it will be impossible to perform our comedy; they will betray us. Therefore the welfare of the state imperatively demands their imprisonment. Besides, you yourself have said that they are traitors, and therefore they deserve punishment. ”

“ Of course, I do not take my own matrimonial experience into account; the same principle of justice which forbids a man to give evidence in his own favour, humanely excusing him from making any admission which may criminate himself. Mrs Ormiston is as beautiful, as amiable, as ever, and has lost all the reserve and sadness which, in her maiden days, overshadowed her charms ”

“ No man had a higher regard for the due maintenance of discipline, or his own dignity, and the reputation of the college; yet nowhere among the seniors could the undergraduate find a more judicious or a kinder friend. He had the art of mixing with them occasionally with all the unreservedness of an equal, without for a moment endangering the respect due to his position. There was no man you could ask a favour of—even if it infringed a little upon the strictness of college regulations—so readily as Ormiston ”

“ Each man regarded his neighbour with intense suspicion and distrust, because, for anything he knew, that neighbour might be a member of the terrible tribunal, by means of which all the affairs of the community were regulated, and a single ill-timed word might absolutely prove his ruin. Such, indeed, in one instance was the case. In an evil hour for himself, an independent town-councillor thought fit to denounce the Clique as an unconstitutional and tyrannical body, and to table a motion for an inquiry as to its nature, members, and proceedings. ”