of certain noblemen in the present day, it is influence and no more. Before the Reform act of 1832, the parliamentary "influence" of a peer, as it was euphemistically termed, meant that he had the absolute disposal of one or more seats in the House of Commons. The Duke of Norfolk, as before mentioned, returned eleven members, the Duke of Richmond three, Lord Buckingham six, the Duke of Newcastle seven. In the year 1820, out of the twenty-six prelates sitting in the House of Lords, only six were not directly or indirectly connected with the peerage; while the value of some of the sees was enormous. Now public opinion is too formidable to allow of jobbery that is not very discreetly managed, and a great deal no doubt is thus managed. But appearances must be kept up.

E. C. Grenville Murray.

MISS MISANTHROPE.

By Justin McCarthy.

CHAPTER IV.

"OH, MUCH DESIRED PRIZE, SWEET LIBERTY!"

The summer had gone and much even of the autumn, and Miss Grey and her companion were settled in London. Minola had had everything planned out in her mind before they left Dukes-Keeton, and little Miss Blanchet was positively awed by her leader's energy, knowledge, and fearlessness. The first night of their arrival in town they went to a quiet, respectable, old-fashioned hotel, well known of Keeton folk, where Miss Grey's father used to stay during his visits to London for many years, and where his name was still well remembered. Then the two strangers from the country set out to look for lodgings, and Miss Grey was able to test her knowledge of London, and satisfy her pride of learning, by conducting her friend straightway to the region in which she had resolved to make a home for herself. She had been greatly divided in mind for a while between Kensington and the West Centre; between the neighborhood of the South Kensington Museum, the glades of the gardens, and all the charms of the old court suburb, and the temptations of the National Gallery, the British Museum, and the old-fashioned squares and houses around the latter. She decided for the British Museum quarter. Miss Blanchet would have preferred the brightness and air of fashion which belonged to Kensington, but Miss Grey ruled that to live somewhere near the British Museum was more like living in London, and she energetically declared that she would rather live in Seven Dials than out of London.

To find a pleasant and suitable lodging would ordinarily have been a difficulty; for the regular London lodging-house keeper detests the sight of women, and only likes the gentleman who disappears in the morning and returns late at night. But luckily there are Keeton folk everywhere. As a rule nobody is born in London, "except children," as a lady once remarked. Come up to London from whatever little Keeton you will, you can find your compatriots settled everywhere in the metropolis. Miss Grey obtained from the kindly landlady of the hotel—who had herself been born in Keeton, and was married to a Glasgow man—a choice of Keeton folk willing to receive respectable and well-recommended lodgers—"real ladies" especially. Miss Grey, being cordially vouched for by the landlady as a real lady, found out a Keeton woman in the West Centre who had a drawing-room and two bedrooms to let.

Had Miss Grey invented the place it could not have suited her better. It was an old-fashioned street, running out of a handsome old-fashioned square. The street was no thoroughfare. Its other end was closed by a solemn, sombre structure with a portico, and over the portico a plaster bust of Pallas. This was an institution or foundation of some kind which had long outlived the uses whereto it had been devoted by its pious founder. It now had nothing but a library, a lecture hall, an enclosed garden (into which, happily for her, the windows of Miss Grey's bedroom looked), an old fountain in the garden, considerable funds, a board of trustees, and an annual dinner. This place lent an air of severe dignity to the street, and furthermore kept the street secluded and quiet by blocking up one of its ends and inviting no traffic. The house in which our pair of wanderers was lodging was itself old-fashioned, and in a manner picturesque. It had broad old staircases of stone, and a large hall and fine rooms. It had once been a noble mansion, and the legend was that its owner had entertained Dr. Johnson there and Sir Joshua Reynolds, and that Mrs. Thrale had often been handed up and down that staircase. Minola loved association with such good company, and it may be confessed went up and down the stairs several times for no other purpose whatever than the pleasure of fancying herself following in the footsteps of bright Mrs. Thrale, with whose wrongs Miss Grey, as a misanthrope, was especially bound to sympathize.

The drawing-room happily looked at least aslant over the grass and the trees of the square. Minola's bedroom, as has been said, looked into the garden of the institution, with its well-kept walks, its shrubs, and its old-fashioned fountain, whose quiet plash was always heard in the seclusion of the back of the house. Had the trunks of the trees been just a little less blackened by smoke our heroine might well have fancied, as she looked from her bedroom window of nights, that she was in some quaint old abode in a quiet country town. But in truth she did not desire to encourage any such delusion. To feel that she was in the heart of London was her especial delight. This feeling would have brightened and glorified a far less attractive place. She used to sit down alone in her bedroom of nights in order to think quietly to herself, "Now I am at last really in London; not visiting London, but living in it." There at least was one dream made real. There was one ambition crowned. "Come what will," she said to herself, "I am living in London." In London and freedom she grew more and more healthy and happy. As a wearied Londoner might have sought out say Keeton, and found new strength and spirits there, so our Keeton girl, who was somewhat pale and thin when she sat on the steps of the ducal mausoleum, grew stronger and brighter every day in the West Centre regions of London.

A happier, quieter, freer life could hardly be imagined, at least for her. She spent hours in the National Gallery and the Museum; she walked with Mary Blanchet in Regent's Park, and delighted to find out new vistas and glimpses of beauty among the trees there, and to insist that it was ever so much better than any place in the country. As autumn came on and the trees grew barer and the skies became of a heavier silver gray, Minola found greater charms in their softened half tones than the brighter lights of summer could give. Even when it rained—and it did rain sometimes—who could fail to see the beauty, all its own, of the green of grass, and the darker stems and branches of trees, showing faintly through the veil of the mist and the soft descending shower? It was, indeed, a delightful Arcadian life. Its simplicity can hardly be better illustrated than by the fact that our adventurous pair of women always dined at one o'clock—when they dined at all—off a chop, except on Sundays, when they invariably had a cold fowl.

Much as Miss Grey loved London, however, it was still a place made up of men whom she considered herself bound to dislike, and of women who depended far too much on these men. Therefore she made studies of scraps of London life, and amused herself by satirizing them to her friend.

"I have accomplished a