"Kitely was pleased with every thing; the timber is really well grown, and he praised it; the view is fine, and he said so. Even of the _chalet_ he condescended a few words of approval, as a feature in the scene. The waterfall, however, he would not praise; it might foam, and splash, and whirl as it would; in vain it threw its tiny spray aloft, and hissed beneath the rocks below; he never wasted even a word upon it.
"You'd scarce fancy, Mr. Kitely," said my father, whose patience was sorely tried; "you'd scarce fancy that river you see there was only a mill-stream."
"I'd scarcely think of calling that mill-stream a river, my lord," was the reply.
"Hence the borough of Collyton is still open, and I have come, by his grace's request, to say that if you desire to enter Parliament it is very much at your service."
My parliamentary life was, as I have said, a brief one, but not without its triumphs. I was long enough a member to have excited the ardent hopes of my friends, and make my name a thing quoted in the lists of party.
Had I remained, I was to have spoken second to the address on the opening of the new session. There was, I own, a most intoxicating sense of pleasure in the first success. The moment in which, fatigued and almost overpowered, I sank into a chair at Bellamy's, with some twenty around me, congratulating, praising, flattering, and foretelling, was worth living for; and yet, perhaps, in that same instant of triumph were sown the seeds of my malady. I was greatly heated; I had excited myself beyond my strength, and spoken for two hours--to myself it seemed scarce twenty minutes; and then, with open cravat and vest, I sat in the current of air between a door and window, drinking in delicious draughts of iced water and flattery. I went home with a slight cough, and something strange, like an obstruction to full breathing, in my chest. Brodie, who saw me next day, I suppose, guessed the whole mischief; for these men look far a-head, and, like sailors, they see storm and hurricane in the cloud not bigger than a man's hand.
I often regret--I shall continue to do, perhaps, still oftener--that I did not die in the harness. To quit the field for sake of life, and not secure it after all, was paltry policy. But what could I do? a severe and contested election would have killed me, and for Collyton it was impossible I could continue to sit.