Fountain, member of a sex with higher
aims, aspired to be great in the county.
Unluckily, his main property was in the funds. He had acres in
----shire; but so few that, some years ago, its lord lieutenant
declined to make him an injustice of the peace. That functionary died,
and on his death the mortified aspirant bought a coppice, christened
it Springwood, and under cover of this fringe to his three meadows,
applied to the new lord lieutenant as M'Duff approached M'Beth. The
new man made him a magistrate; so now he aspired to be a deputy
lieutenant, and attended all the boards of magistrates, and turnpike
trusts, etc., and brought up votes and beer-barrels at each election,
and, in, short, played all the cards in his pack, Lucy included, to
earn that distinction.
We may as well confess that there lurked in him a half-unconscious
hope that some day or other, in some strange collision or combination
of parties, a man profound in county business, zealous in county
interests, personally obnoxious to nobody, might drop into the seat of
county member; and, if this should be, would not he have the sense to
hold his tongue upon the noisy questions that waste Parliament's time,
and the nation's; but, on the first of those periodical attacks to
which the wretched landowner is subject, wouldn't he speak, and show
the difference between a mere member of the Commons and a member for
the county?
If anyone had asked this man plump which is the most important,
England or ----shire, he would have certainly told you England; but
our opinions are not the notions we repeat, and can defend by reasons
or even by facts: our opinions are the notions we feel and act on.
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