“Never mind it, Edric dear!” said he, throwing his arms round his pupil’s neck; “you have one friend, at any rate, who loves you dearly, and will never desert you.”
“I know it,” exclaimed Edric, warmly returning his tutor’s embrace; “Yes, doctor, you are my friend, of that I am fully satisfied; and we will succeed, or perish together.”
“You will want many things to enable you to proceed in your enterprise,” said Father Morris, “with which you must furnish yourselves in London. Besides, as Edric has never been ten miles from home in his life, he should stay a short time to see the wonders of that vast metropolis, before he leaves his native country. Foreseeing this, and thinking, as strangers in London, you would feel awkward in having no place to go to on your arrival, I have dispatched a carrier pigeon to a friend of mine in town, Lord Gustavus de Montfort, who will, I am sure, give you a hearty welcome, and will afford you both the shelter of his house, and the aid of his advice.”
“I know not how to express my gratitude,” returned Edric.
“Then say nothing about it—if you really feel obliged, profit by my directions. A stage balloon will pass through the village in an hour, shall you be ready to avail yourselves of the opportunity?”
“I would go this instant,” exclaimed Edric. The doctor, with some difficulty, consented to this arrangement, and, at the appointed moment, Edric and his tutor were on their way to London: though the doctor could scarcely be persuaded to set off; for, again and again, he would return to survey the treasures he was leaving behind, and the moment Edric thought he had him safe, he would recollect some indispensable requisite for their journey, and hurry back again to find it. At last they were fairly started, and a favourable wind blew them rapidly towards London. Edric had never seen this vast metropolis, and his astonishment and delight, when its magnificent palaces, its superb streets, its public buildings, its theatres, and its churches, broke upon him, was quite beyond description. His transports and exclamations, indeed, at length became so violent, as quite to annoy the learned doctor.
“If you feel such rapture at the sight of London,” said he, peevishly, “I suppose you will be reluctant to quit it; and I dare say you already repent having proposed to travel.”
“Oh! what is that?” cried Edric, without attending to him, as, lost in amazement, he saw a house in the suburbs gently slide out of its place, and glide majestically along the road, a lady at one of the windows kissing her hand to someone in another house as she passed. “Do my eyes deceive me, or does that house move?”
“Certainly it does,” replied the doctor. “Did you never see a moving house before? You must have heard of them at any rate, for nothing can be more common. It certainly is convenient, when one wants to go into the country for a few weeks, to be able to take one’s house with one: it saves a great deal of trouble in packing, and permits one to have all one’s little conveniences about one. You see there are grooves in the bottom of the houses that just fit on the iron railways; and as they are propelled by steam, they slide on without much trouble. It does not answer, however, with any but small houses, for large ones can’t well be made compact enough. However, you must postpone your admiration of that, as well as of the other wonders of London, for here we are at Lord Gustavus’s door. What a noble mansion! is it not? This street, Edric, is called the Strand, and is the most fashionable in London; because it adjoins the Queen’s favourite palace at Somerset House.”
“Is that the palace?” said Edric. “It seems a noble pile of building.”
“The gardens are fine,” replied the doctor; “but as they are thrown open to the public, and nothing is paid for admission, it is reckoned vulgar to walk in them. You English do not like anything you do not pay for; but more of this hereafter. We must now prepare to pay our respects to our noble host.”
Lord Gustavus de Montfort received them very kindly, but Edric found something in his voice and manners excessively forbidding. He had a pompous disagreeable manner of speaking, with a nasal accent so strong, that it was absolutely torture to Edric, whose sense of hearing was uncommonly fine, to listen to him; he had also a conceited dictatorial way of delivering his opinion, which Edric thought extremely unpleasant. He generally commenced his speeches with “Thinking as I think, and as I am positive everyone who hears me must think, or at least ought to think;” and this exordium formed an epitome of his character; as he was firmly persuaded that everyone who differed in the slightest degree from his opinion, was decidedly wrong, whilst the possibility of his ever being mistaken himself never entered his imagination. His father had been one of the counsellors of the late Queen, and his eldest brother having declined to take the father’s place upon his death, Lord Gustavus had been appointed to it. Thus he was really a person of some consequence in the state; and though his being so was quite a matter of chance, arising from the circumstances above-mentioned and the indolence of the Queen, he affected to regard it as a matter of personal favour to himself, and endeavoured to persuade his hearers that the affairs of government could not possibly go on without him. Knowing his foible of wishing to be thought of importance in the realm, and feeling the want of a leader of rank, some of the discontented spirits of the kingdom had endeavoured to gain him over to their party; and though Lord Gustavus was strictly loyal, and
