About a month after this affair with the runaway¹ horse Arthur Fletcher went to Greshamsbury, preparatory to his final sojourn² at Silverbridge for the week previous to his election. Greshamsbury, the seat of Francis Gresham, Esq., who was a great man in these parts, was about twenty miles from Silverbridge, and the tedious work of canvassing⁴ the electors could not therefore be done from thence;—but he spent a couple of pleasant days with his old friend, and learned what was being said and what was being done in and about the borough⁷. Mr. Gresham was a man, not as yet quite forty years of age, very popular, with a large family, of great wealth, and master of the county hounds. His father had been an embarrassed man, with a large estate; but this Gresham had married a lady with immense wealth, and had prospered⁸ in the world. He was not an active politician. He did not himself care for Parliament, or for the good things which political power can give, and was on this account averse⁹ to the Coalition¹⁰. He thought that Sir Orlando Drought and the others were touching¹¹ pitch and had defiled¹² themselves. But he was conscious that in so thinking he was one of but a small minority; and, bad as the world around him certainly was, terrible as had been the fall of the glory of old England, he was nevertheless content to live without loud grumbling¹³ as long as the farmers paid him their rent, and the labourers in his part of the country did not strike for wages, and the land when sold would fetch thirty years' purchase. He had not therefore been careful to

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