—— This is some creature of the elements,

Most like your sea-gull. He can wheel and whistle

His screaming song, e’en when the storm is loudest —

Take for his sheeted couch the restless foam

Of the wild wave-crest — slumber in the calm,

And daily with the storm. Yet ’tis a gull,

An arrant gull, with all this.

THE CHAMPION.

“And here is to thee,” said the fashionable gallant whom we have described, “honest Tom; and a cup of welcome to thee out of Looby-land. Why, thou hast been so long in the country, that thou hast got a bumpkinly clod-compelling sort of look thyself. That greasy doublet fits thee as if it were thy reserved Sunday’s apparel; and the points seem as if they were stay-laces bought for thy true-love Marjory. I marvel thou canst still relish a ragout. Methinks now, to a stomach bound in such a jacket, eggs and bacon were a diet more conforming.”

“Rally away, my good lord, while wit lasts,” answered his companion; “yours is not the sort of ammunition which will bear much expenditure. Or rather, tell me news from Court, since we have met so opportunely.”

“You would have asked me these an hour ago,” said the lord, “had not your very soul been under Chaubert’s covered dishes. You remembered King’s affairs will keep cool, and entre-mets must be eaten hot.”

“Not so, my lord; I only kept common talk whilst that eavesdropping rascal of a landlord was in the room; so that, now the coast is clear once more, I pray you for news from Court.”

“The Plot is nonsuited,” answered the courtier —“Sir George Wakeman acquitted — the witnesses discredited by the jury — Scroggs, who ranted on one side, is now ranting on t’other.”

“Rat the Plot, Wakeman, witnesses, Papists, and Protestants, all together! Do you think I care for such trash as that? — Till the Plot comes up the Palace backstair, and gets possession of old Rowley’s own imagination, I care not a farthing who believes or disbelieves. I hang by him will bear me out.”

“Well, then,” said the lord, “the next news is Rochester’s disgrace.”

“Disgraced! — How, and for what? The morning I came off he stood as fair as any one.”

“That’s over — the epitaph* has broken his neck — and now he may write one for his own Court favour, for it is dead and buried.”

* The epitaph alluded to is the celebrated epigram made by Rochester on Charles II. It was composed at the King’s request, who nevertheless resented its poignancy.

The lines are well known:—

“Here lies our sovereign lord the King,

Whose word no man relies on,

Who never said a foolish thing,

And never did a wise one.”

“The epitaph!” exclaimed Tom; “why, I was by when it was made; and it passed for an excellent good jest with him whom it was made upon.”

“Ay, so it did amongst ourselves,” answered his companion; “but it got abroad, and had a run like a mill-race. It was in every coffee-house, and in half the diurnals. Grammont translated it into French too; and there is no laughing at so sharp a jest, when it is dinned into your ears on all sides. So disgraced is the author; and but for his Grace of Buckingham, the Court would be as dull as my Lord Chancellor’s wig.”

“Or as the head it covers. — Well, my lord, the fewer at Court, there is the more room for those that can bustle there. But there are two mainstrings of Shaftesbury’s fiddle broken — the Popish Plot fallen into discredit — and Rochester disgraced. Changeful times — but here is to the little man who shall mend them.”

“I apprehend you,” replied his lordship; “and meet your health with my love. Trust me, my lord loves you, and longs for you. — Nay, I have done you reason. — By your leave, the cup is with me. Here is to his buxom Grace of Bucks.”

“As blithe a peer,” said Smith, “as ever turned night to day. Nay, it shall be an overflowing bumper, an you will; and I will drink it super naculum. — And how stands the great Madam?”*

* The Duchess of Portsmouth, Charles II.‘s favourite mistress; very unpopular at the time of the Popish Plot, as well from her religion as her country, being a Frenchwoman and a Catholic.

“Stoutly against all change,” answered the lord —“Little Anthony* can make nought of her.”

* Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, the politician and intriguer of the period.

“Then he shall bring her influence to nought. Hark in thine ear. Thou knowest ——” (Here he whispered so low that Julian could not catch the sound.)

“Know him?” answered the other —“Know Ned of the Island? — To be sure I do.”

“He is the man that shall knot the great fiddle-strings that have snapped. Say I told you so; and thereupon I give thee his health.”

“And thereupon I pledge thee,” said the young nobleman, “which on any other argument I were loath to do — thinking of Ned as somewhat the cut of a villain.”

“Granted, man — granted,” said the other — “a very thorough-paced rascal; but able, my lord, able and necessary; and, in this plan, indispensable. — Pshaw! — This champagne turns stronger as it gets older, I think.”

“Hark, mine honest fellow,” said the courtier; “I would thou wouldst give me some item of all this mystery. Thou hast it, I know; for whom do men entrust but trusty Chiffinch?”

“It is your pleasure to say so, my lord,” answered Smith (whom we shall hereafter call by his real name of Chiffinch) with such drunken gravity, for his speech had become a little altered by his copious libations in the course of the evening — “few men know more, or say less, than I do; and it well becomes my station. Conticuere omnes, as the grammar hath it — all men should learn to hold their tongue.”

“Except with a friend, Tom — except with a friend. Thou wilt never be such a dogbolt as to refuse a hint to a friend? Come, you get too wise and statesman-like for your office. — The ligatures of thy most peasantly jacket there are like to burst with thy secret. Come, undo a button, man; it is for the health of thy constitution — Let out a reef; and let thy chosen friend know what is meditating. Thou knowest I am as true as thyself to little Anthony, if he can but get uppermost.”

“If, thou lordly infidel!” said Chiffinch —“talk’st thou to me of ifs? — There is neither if nor and in the matter. The great Madam shall be pulled a peg down — the great Plot screwed a peg or two up. Thou knowest Ned? — Honest Ned had a brother’s death to revenge.”

“I have heard so,” said the nobleman; “and that his persevering resentment of that injury was one of the few points which seemed to be a sort of heathenish virtue in him.”

“Well,” continued Chiffinch, “in manoeuvring to bring about this revenge, which he hath laboured at many a day, he hath discovered a treasure.”

“What! — In the Isle of Man?” said his companion.

“Assure yourself of it. — She is a creature so lovely, that she needs but be seen to put down every one of the favourites, from Portsmouth and Cleveland down to that threepenny baggage, Mistress Nelly.”

“By my word, Chiffinch,” said my lord, “that is a reinforcement after the fashion of thine own best tactics. But bethink thee, man! To make such a conquest, there wants more than a cherry-cheek and a bright eye — there must be wit — wit, man, and manners, and a little sense besides, to keep influence when it is gotten.”

“Pshaw! will you tell me what goes to this vocation?” said Chiffinch. “Here, pledge me her health in a brimmer. — Nay, you shall do it on knees, too. — Never such a triumphant beauty was seen — I went to church on purpose, for the first time these ten years — Yet I lie, it was not to church neither — it was to chapel.”

“To chapel! — What the devil, is she a Puritan?” exclaimed the other courtier.

“To be sure she is. Do you think I would be accessory to bringing a Papist into favour in these times, when, as my good Lord said in the House, there should not be a Popish manservant, nor a Popish maid-servant, not so much as dog or cat, left to bark or mew about the King!”*

* Such was the extravagance of Shaftesbury’s eloquence.

“But consider, Chiffie, the dislikelihood of her pleasing,” said the noble courtier. —“What! old Rowley, with his wit, and love of wit — his wildness, and love of wildness — he form a league with a silly, scrupulous, unidea’d Puritan! — Not if she were Venus.”

“Thou knowest nought of the matter,” answered Chiffinch. “I tell thee, the fine contrast between the seeming saint and falling sinner will give zest to the old gentleman’s inclination. If I do not know him, who does? — Her health, my lord, on your bare knee, as you would live to be of the bedchamber.”

“I pledge you most devoutly,” answered his friend. “But you have not told me how the acquaintance is to be made; for you cannot, I think, carry her to Whitehall.”

“Aha, my dear lord, you would have the whole secret! but that I cannot afford — I can spare a friend a peep at my ends, but no one must look on the means by which they are achieved.”— So saying, he shook his drunken head most wisely.

The villainous design which this discourse implied, and which his heart told him was designed against Alice Bridgenorth, stirred Julian so extremely, that he involuntarily shifted his posture, and laid his hand on his sword hilt.

Chiffinch heard a rustling, and broke off, exclaiming, “Hark! — Zounds, something moved — I trust I have told the tale to no ears but thine.”

“I will cut off any which have drunk in but a syllable of thy words,” said the nobleman; and raising a candle, he took a hasty survey of the apartment. Seeing nothing that could incur his menaced resentment, he replaced the light and continued:—“Well, suppose the Belle Louise de Querouaille* shoots from her high station in the firmament, how will you rear up the downfallen Plot again — for without that same Plot, think of it as thou wilt, we have no change of hands — and matters remain as they were, with a Protestant courtezan instead of a Papist — Little Anthony can but little speed without that Plot of his — I believe, in my conscience, he begot it himself.”?

* Charles’s principal mistress en titre. She was created Duchess of Portsmouth.

? Shaftesbury himself is supposed to have said that he knew not who was the inventor of the Plot, but that he himself had all the advantage of the discovery.

“Whoever begot it,” said Chiffinch, “he hath adopted it; and a thriving babe it has been to him. Well, then, though it lies out of my way, I will play Saint Peter again — up with t’other key, and unlock t’other mystery.”

“Now thou speakest like a good fellow; and I will, with my own hands, unwire this fresh flask, to begin a brimmer to the success of thy achievement.”

“Well, then,” continued the communicative Chiffinch, “thou knowest that they have long had a nibbling at the old Countess of Derby. — So Ned was sent down — he owes her an old accompt, thou knowest — with private instructions to possess himself of the island, if he could, by help of some of his old friends. He hath ever kept up spies upon her; and happy man was he, to think his hour of vengeance was come so nigh. But he missed his blow; and the old girl being placed on her guard, was soon in a condition to make Ned smoke for it. Out of the island he came with little advantage for having entered it; when, by some means — for the devil, I think, stands ever his friend — he obtained information concerning a messenger, whom her old Majesty of Man had sent to London to make party in her behalf. Ned stuck himself to this fellow — a raw, half-bred lad, son of an old blundering Cavalier of the old stamp, down in Derbyshire — and so managed the swain, that he brought him to the place where I was waiting, in anxious expectation of the pretty one I told you of. By Saint Anthony, for I will swear by no meaner oath, I stared when I saw this great lout — not that the fellow is so ill-looked neither — I stared like — like — good now, help me to a simile.”

“Like Saint Anthony’s pig, an it were sleek,” said the young lord; “your eyes, Chiffie, have the very blink of one. But what hath all this to do with the Plot? Hold, I have had wine enough.”

“You shall not balk me,” said Chiffinch; and a jingling was heard, as if he were filling his comrade’s glass with a very unsteady hand. “Hey — What the devil is the matter? — I used to carry my glass steady — very steady.”

“Well, but this stranger?”

“Why, he swept at game and ragout as he would at spring beef or summer mutton. Never saw so unnurtured a cub — Knew no more what he ate than an infidel — I cursed him by my gods when I saw Chaubert’s chef-d’ oeuvres glutted down so indifferent a throat. We took the freedom to spice his goblet a little, and ease him of his packet of letters; and the fool went on his way the next morning with a budget artificially filled with grey paper. Ned would have kept him, in hopes to have made a witness of him, but the boy was not of that mettle.”

“How will you prove your letters?” said the courtier.

“La you there, my lord,” said Chiffinch; “one may see with half an eye, for all your laced doublet, that you have been of the family of Furnival’s, before your brother’s death sent you to Court. How prove the letters? — Why, we have but let the sparrow fly with a string round his foot. — We have him again so soon as we list.”

“Why, thou art turned a very Machiavel, Chiffinch,” said his friend. “But how if the youth proved restive? — I have heard these Peak men have hot heads and hard hands.”

“Trouble not yourself — that was cared for, my lord,” said Chiffinch — “his pistols might bark, but they could not bite.”

“Most exquisite Chiffinch, thou art turned micher as well as padder — Canst both rob a man and kidnap him!”

“Micher and padder — what terms be these?” said Chiffinch. “Methinks these are sounds to lug out upon. You will have me angry to the degree of falling foul — robber and kidnapper!”

“You mistake verb for noun-substantive,” replied his lordship; “I said rob and kidnap — a man may do either once and away without being professional.”

“But not without spilling a little foolish noble blood, or some such red-coloured gear,” said Chiffinch, starting up.

“Oh yes,” said his lordship; “all this may be without these dire consequences, and as you will find tomorrow, when you return to England; for at present you are in the land of Champagne, Chiffie; and that you may continue so, I drink thee this parting cup to line thy nightcap.”

“I do not refuse your pledge,” said Chiffinch; “but I drink to thee in dudgeon and in hostility — It is cup of wrath, and a gage of battle. To-morrow, by dawn, I will have thee at point of fox, wert thou the last of the Savilles. — What the devil! think you I fear you because you are a lord?”

“Not so, Chiffinch,” answered his companion. “I know thou fearest nothing but beans and bacon, washed down with bumpkin-like beer. — Adieu, sweet Chiffinch — to bed — Chiffinch — to bed.”

So saying, he lifted a candle, and left the apartment. And Chiffinch, whom the last draught had nearly overpowered, had just strength enough left to do the same, muttering, as he staggered out, “Yes, he shall answer it. — Dawn of day? D— n me — It is come already — Yonder’s the dawn — No, d — n me, ’tis the fire glancing on the cursed red lattice &............