and agents. They do not see much, scarcely
anything, of him, they say, and they don't
need to, if he's to be judged by the letters
he writes and the orders he sends. To
screw up the rents and to lengthen the
hours of labour was the purport of these
letters, while their style was modelled on
that used by the Saxon Franklin to his
hog-hind—curt, overbearing, and offensive.
Agents and stewards, recipients of these
missives, say bitter words about Lord
Hetherington in private, and tenants and
workmen curse him secretly as they bow
to his decree. To them he is a haughty,
selfish, grinding aristocrat, without a
thought for any one but himself; whereas
in reality he is a chuckle-headed nobleman,
with an inordinate idea of his position
certainly, but kindly hearted, a slave to his
wife, and with one great desire in life, a
desire to distinguish himself somehow, no
matter how.

He had tried politics. When a young
man he had sat as Lord West for his
county, and the first Conservative ministry
which came into office after he had
succeeded to his title, remembering the service
which Lord West had done them in roaring,
hooting, and yar-yaring in the House
of Commons, repaid the obligation by
appointing the newly fledged Earl of
Hetherington to be the head of one of the inferior
departments. Immensely delighted was his
lordship at first, went down to the office
daily, to the intense astonishment of the
departmental private secretary, whose official
labours had hitherto been confined to
writing about four letters a day, took upon
himself to question some of the suggestions
which were made for his approval, carped
at the handwriting of the clerks, and for at
least a week thought he had at length
found his proper place in the world, and
had made an impression. But it did not
last. The permanent heads of the department
soon found him out, scratched through
the external cuticle of pride and pomposity,
and discovered the true obstinate dullard
underneath. And then they humoured him,
and led him by the nose, as they had led
many a better man before him, and he
subsided into a nonentity; and then his party
went out of office, and when they came
in again they declined to reappoint Lord
Hetherington, though he clamoured ever
so loudly.

Social science was the field in which his
lordship next disported himself, and prolix,
pragmatical, and eccentric as are its
professors generally, he managed to excel them
all. Lord Hetherington had his theories on
the utilisation of sewage and the treatment
of criminals, on strikes and trades unions—
the first of which he thought should be
suppressed by the military, the second put
down by Act of Parliament—and on the
proper position of women; on which
subject he certainly spoke with more than his
usual spirit and fluency. But he was a
bore upon all, and at length the social
science audiences, so tolerant of boredom,
felt that they could stand him no longer,
and coughed him down gently but firmly
when he attempted to address them. Lord
Hetherington then gave up social science
in disgust, and let his noble mind lie fallow
for a few months, during which time he
employed himself in cutting his noble
fingers with a turning-lathe which he
caused to be erected in his mansion,
and which amused him very much: until
it suddenly occurred to him that the
art of bookbinding was one in which his
taste and talent might find a vent. So the
room in which the now deserted turning-
lathe stood was soon littered with scraps of
leather and floating fragments of gilt-leaf,
and there his lordship spent hours every
day looking on at two men very hard at
work in their shirt sleeves, and occasionally
handing them the tools they asked for, and
thus he practised the art of bookbinding.
Every one said it was an odd thing for a
man to take to, but every one knew that
Lord Hetherington was an odd man,
consequently no one was astonished, after the
bound volumes had been duly exhibited to
dining or calling friends, and had elicited
the various outbursts of "Jove!" "Ah!"
"Charming!" "Quite too nice!" and
"Can't think how he does it, eh?" which
politeness demanded, no one was astonished
to hear that his lordship, panting for
something fresh in which to distinguish
himself, had found it in taxidermy, which
was now absorbing all the energies of his
noble mind. The receipt of a packet of
humming birds, presented by a poor relation
in the navy, first turned Lord
Hetherington's thoughts to this new pursuit, and
he acted with such promptitude that
before the end of a week, Mr. Byrne—
small, shrunken, and high-shouldered—
had taken the place at the bench lately
occupied by the stalwart men in shirt
sleeves, but the smell of paste and gum
had been supplanted by that of pungent
chemicals, the floor was strewn with
feathers and wool instead of leather and
gilt-leaf, and his lordship, still looking on