CHAPTER IV. "England is so idly king'd, Her sceptre so fantastically borne, ON calling upon Lord Arlington next day, our hero received from his secretary the official confirmation of his appointment, with instructions to proceed, the next morning but one, to Hampton Court, for the purpose of being introduced to the Queen, and immediately commencing the duties of his new office. With this welcome intelligence he hastened to Lord Rochester's, happy that his appointed interview would afford him an opportunity of renewing his thanks. He was not yet risen, and Jocelyn was ushered to his bed-side, when he expressed his apprehensions that his lordship's various wagers and undertakings of the night and morning might have proved too much for his strength. "Not a bit, not a bit," he replied, "the swim from Vauxhall carried off my drunkenness, and enabled me to win all my wagers and finish in good stile. I am used to these freaks, have had some sound sleep since, and feel in better health and spirits this morning than I have done for a long time. This is precisely my reason for lying in bed, that I may preserve them till to-night, when I shall have still more urgent occasion for them." "Have you then some fresh wagers to win ?" inquired Jocelyn. 66 Ay, my Faunus, my Sylvan, my man of the woods, a wager that will make me for life. Excuse these epithets, Mr. Vice-Chamberlain ; we will be serious. I have served you in obtaining that office, because I foresaw that I should want your assistance; and you are now going to return the favour, in the hope of benefiting still farther by my future influence. Now, prythee don't try to look so ingenuous and disclamatory; don't affect to be disinterested, though I will allow you to be as grateful as you please for any benefits you may hereafter expect. I hate a man who is influenced by any thing but selfishness, or rather that pretends it, for it is the universal impulse. He who yields to his feelings veers and vacillates with the whim of the moment; he who is governed by principles, as he calls them, changes his conduct, and tells you he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday; know not where to have such fellows. Give me the man who follows nothing but his own interest. I know how to deal with such a chapman; I know that he will be my servant so long as I serve him. These are my notions we understand one another now, Mr. Vice, as well as if we had been acquainted twenty years." you : "I will make no professions, since you consider them so suspicious," said Jocelyn, “but I cannot say that I share your lordship's sentiments." "I don't expect you to say so; few men care to be so honest as myself; they may own to a bad head, but never to a bad heart. My candour takes an opposite course; I will acknowledge my heart to be as black as you please, but I should be sorry to have my wit impeached. So much for prologue, and now to the play. Premising that for your present aid you are to have the benefit of my future influence, I have to propose that you should assist me to-night in carrying off Mistress Mallett, the great beauty and heiress of Somersetshire, whose fortune of twenty-five hundred per annum may save many scores of creditors from leaping out of my anteroom window, and prove marvellously acceptable to a certain pennyless wight yclept John Earl of Rochester." "Surely, my lord, you would not use force," said Jocelyn. "None more than the lady herself is willing to encounter. The King has repeatedly spoken in my behalf; the damsel is ripe and ready; but a psalm-singing mother, and Lord Hayley an old dotard of a grandfather, entertain the strange conceit that I am not sufficiently moral and religious for a good husband; forgetting that if there be any truth in the old adage about a reformed rake, I am entitled to become a marital phoenix. To this opinion, however, the donzella herself luckily inclines, so that she has agreed to elope with me to-night, although she is so strictly watched that I must carry her off vi et armis. This method she prefers, because it saves appearances on her side, while she has no objection to the compulsion that gives her the man of her choice for a husband. She is engaged to a ball at Mistress Stewart's, one of the maids of honour, as the King still calls her, |