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The day after his niece’s marriage was happily effected, Lord Oldborough said to his secretary, “Now, Mr. Cunningham Falconer, I have leisure to turn my mind again to the Tourville papers.”

“I was in hopes, my lord,” said the secretary (se composant le visage), “I was in hopes that this happy alliance, which secures the Duke of Greenwich, would have put your lordship’s mind completely at ease, and that you would not have felt it necessary to examine farther into that mystery.”

“Weak men never foresee adversity during prosperity, nor prosperity during adversity,” replied Lord Oldborough. “His majesty has decided immediately to recall his present envoy at that German court; a new one will be sent, and the choice of that envoy his majesty is graciously pleased to leave to me.—You are a very young man, Mr. Cunningham Falconer, but you have given me such written irrefragable proofs of your ability and information, that I have no scruple in recommending you to his majesty as a person to whom his interests may be intrusted, and the zeal and attachment your family have shown me in actions, not in words only, have convinced me that I cannot choose better for my private affairs. Therefore, if the appointment be agreeable to you, you cannot too soon make what preparations may be necessary.”

Cunningham, delighted, made his acknowledgments and thanks for the honour and the favour conferred upon him with all the eloquence in his power.

“I endeavour not to do any thing hastily, Mr. Cunningham Falconer,” said his lordship. “I frankly tell you, that I was not at first prepossessed in your favour, nor did I feel inclined to do more for you than that to which I had been induced by peculiar circumstances. Under this prepossession, I perhaps did not for some time do justice to your talents; but I should be without judgment or without candour, if I did not feel and acknowledge the merit of the performance which I hold in my hand.”

The performance was a pamphlet in support of Lord Oldborough’s administration, published in Cunningham’s name, but the greater part of it was written by his good genius in the garret.

“On this,” said Lord Oldborough, putting his hand upon it as it lay on the table, “on this found your just title, sir, to my esteem and confidence.”

Would not the truth have burst from any man of common generosity, honour, or honesty?—Would not a man who had any feeling, conscience, or shame, supposing he could have resolved to keep his secret, at this instant, have been ready to sink into the earth with confusion, under this unmerited praise?—In availing himself falsely of a title to esteem and confidence, then fraudulently of another’s talents to obtain favour, honour, and emolument, would not a blush, or silence, some awkwardness, or some hesitation, have betrayed him to eyes far less penetrating than those of Lord Oldborough? Yet nothing of this was felt by Cunningham: he made, with a good grace, all the disqualifying speeches of a modest author, repeated his thanks and assurances of grateful attachment, and retired triumphant.—It must be acknowledged that he was fit for a diplomatist. His credentials were forthwith made out in form, and his instructions, public and private, furnished. No expense was spared in fitting him out for his embassy—his preparations made, his suite appointed, his liveries finished, his carriage at the door, he departed in grand style; and all Commissioner Falconer’s friends, of which, at this time, he could not fail to have many, poured in with congratulations on the rapid advancement of his sons, and on all sides exclamations were heard in favour of friends in power.

“True—very true, indeed. And see what it is,” said Commissioner Falconer, turning to Buckhurst, “see what it is to have a son so perverse, that he will not make use of a good friend when he has one, and who will not accept the promise of an excellent living when he can get it!”

All his friends and acquaintance now joining in one chorus told Buckhurst, in courtly terms, that he was a fool, and Buckhurst began to think they must be right.—“For here,” said he to himself, “are my two precious brothers finely provided for, one an envoy, the other a major in esse, and a lieutenant-colonel in posse—and I, in esse and in posse, what?—Nothing but a good fellow—one day with the four in hand club, the next in my chambers, studying the law, by which I shall never make a penny. And there’s Miss Caroline Percy, who has declined the honour of my hand, no doubt, merely because I have indulged a little in good company, instead of immuring myself with Coke and Blackstone, Viner and Saunders, Bosanquet and Puller, or chaining myself to a special-pleader’s desk, like cousin Alfred, that galley-slave of the law!—No, no, I’ll not make a galley-slave of myself. Besides, at my mother’s, in all that set, and in the higher circles with Hauton and the Clays, and those people, whenever I appear in the character of a poor barrister, I am scouted—should never have got on at all, but for my being a wit—a wit!—and have not I wit enough to make my fortune? As my father says, What hinders me?—My conscience only. And why should my conscience be so cursedly delicate, so unlike other men’s consciences?”

In this humour, Buckhurst was easily persuaded by his father to take orders. The paralytic incumbent of Chipping-Friars had just at this time another stroke of the palsy, on which Colonel Hauton congratulated the young deacon; and, to keep him in patience while waiting for the third stroke, made him chaplain to his regiment.—The Clays also introduced him to their uncle, Bishop Clay, who had, as they told him, taken a prodigious fancy to him; for he observed, that in carving a partridge, Buckhurst never touched the wing with a knife, but after nicking the joint, tore it off, so as to leave adhering to the bone that muscle obnoxious to all good eaters.—The bishop pronounced him to be “a capital carver.”

Fortune at this time threw into Buckhurst’s hands unasked, unlooked-for, and in the oddest way imaginable, a gift of no small value in itself, and an earnest of her future favours. At some high festival, Buckhurst was invited to dine with the bishop. Now Bishop Clay was a rubicund, full-blown, short-necked prelate, with the fear of apoplexy continually before him, except when dinner was on the table; and at this time a dinner was on the table, rich with every dainty of the season, that earth, air, and sea, could provide. Grace being first said by the chaplain, the bishop sat down “richly to enjoy;” but it happened in the first onset, that a morsel too large for his lordship’s swallow stuck in his throat. The bishop grew crimson—purple—black in the face; the chaplain started up, and untied his neckcloth. The guests crowded round, one offering water, another advising bread, another calling for a raw egg, another thumping his lordship on the back. Buckhurst Falconer, with more presence of mind than was shown by any other person, saved his patron’s life. He blew with force in the bishop’s ear, and thus produced such a salutary convulsion in the throat, as relieved his lordship from the danger of suffocation [Footnote: Some learned persons assert that this could not have happened. We can only aver that it did happen. The assertions against the possibility of the fact remind us of the physician in Zadig, who, as the fable tells us, wrote a book to prove that Zadig should have gone blind, though he had actually recovered the use of his eye.—Zadig never read the book.]. The bishop, recovering his breath and vital functions, sat up, restored to life and dinner—he ate again, and drank to Mr. Buckhurst Falconer’s health, with thanks for this good service to the church, to which he prophesied the reverend young gentleman would, in good time, prove an honour. And that he might be, in some measure, the means of accomplishing his own prophecy, Bishop Clay did, before he slept, which was immediately after dinner, present Mr. Buckhurst Falconer with a living worth 400l. a year; a living which had not fallen into the bishop’s gift above half a day, and which, as there were six worthy clergymen in waiting for it, would necessarily have been disposed of the next morning.

“Oh! star of patronage, shine ever thus upon the Falconers!” cried Buckhurst, when, elevated with wine in honour of the church, he gave an account to his father at night of the success of the day.—“Oh! thou, whose influence has, for us, arrested Fortune at the top of her wheel, be ever thus propitious!—Only make me a dean. Have you not made my brother, the dunce, a colonel? and my brother, the knave, an envoy?—I only pray to be a dean—I ask not yet to be a bishop—you see I have some conscience left.”

“True,” said his father, laughing. “Now go to bed, Buckhurst; you may, for your fortune is up.”

“Ha! my good cousin Percys, where are you now?—Education, merit, male and female, where are you now?—Planting cabbages, and presiding at a day-school: one son plodding in a pleader’s office—another cast in an election for an hospital physician—a third encountering a plague in the West Indies. I give you joy!”

No wonder the commissioner exulted, for he had not only provided thus rapidly for his sons, but he had besides happy expectations for himself.—With Lord Oldborough he was now in higher favour and confidence than he had ever hoped to be. Lord Oldborough, who was a man little prone to promise, and who always did more than he said, had, since the marriage of his niece, thrown out a hint that he was aware of the expense it must have been to Commissioner and Mrs. Falconer to give entertainments continually, and to keep open house, as they had done this winter, for his political friends—no instance of zeal in his majesty’s service, his lordship said, he hoped was ever lost upon him, and, if he continued in power, he trusted he should find occasion to show his gratitude. This from another minister might mean nothing but to pay with words; from Lord Oldborough the commissioner justly deemed it as good as a promissory note for a lucrative place. Accordingly he put it in circulation directly among his creditors, and he no longer trembled at the expense at which he had lived and was living. Both Mrs. Falconer and he had ever considered a good cook, and an agreeable house, as indispensably necessary to those who would rise in the world; and they laid it down as a maxim, that, if people wished to grow rich, they must begin by appearing so. Upon this plan every thing in their establishment, table, servants, equipage, dress, were far more splendid than their fortune could afford. The immediate gratification which resulted from this display, combining with their maxims of policy, encouraged the whole family to continue this desperate game. Whenever the timidity of the commissioner had started; when, pressed by his creditors, he had backed, and had wished to stop in this course of extravagance; his lady, of a more intrepid character, urged him forward, pleading that he had gone too far to recede—that the poorer they were, the more necessary to keep up the brilliant appearance of affluence. How else could her daughters, after all the sums that had been risked upon them, hope to be advantageously established? How otherwise could they preserve what her friend Lady Jane Granville so justly styled the patronage of fashion?

When success proved Mrs. Falconer to be right, “Now, Commissioner Falconer! Now!” How she triumphed, and how she talked! Her sons all in such favour—her daughters in such fashion! No party without the Miss Falconers!—Miss Falconers must sing—Miss Falconers must play—Miss Falconers must dance, or no lady of a house could feel herself happy, or could think she had done her duty—no piano, no harp could draw such crowds as the Miss Falconers. It was the ambition among the fashionable men to dance with the Miss Falconers, to flirt with the Miss Falconers. “Not merely flirting, ma’am,” as Mrs. Falconer said, and took proper pains should be heard, “but several serious proposals from very respectable quarters:” however, none yet exactly what she could resolve to accept for the girls—she looked high for them, she owned—she thought she had a right to look high. Girls in fashion should not take the first offers—they should hold up their heads: why should they not aspire to rank, why not to title, as well as to fortune?

Poor Petcalf! General Petcalf’s son had been for some time, as it was well known, desperately in love with Miss Georgiana Falconer; but what chance had he now? However, he was to be managed: he was useful sometimes, as a partner, “to whom one may say one is engaged when a person one does not choose to dance with asks for the honour of one’s hand—useful sometimes to turn over the leaves of the music-book—useful always as an attendant in public places—useful, in short, to be exhibited as a captive; for one captive leads to another conquest.” And Miss Arabella Falconer, too, could boast her conquests, though nobody merely by looking at her would have guessed it: but she was a striking exemplification of the truth of Lady Jane Granville’s maxim, that fashion, like Venus’s girdle, can beautify any girl, let her be ever so ugly.

And now the Falconer family having risen and succeeded beyond their most sanguine hopes by a combination of lucky circumstances, and by adherence to their favourite system, we leave them fortified in their principles, and at the height of prosperity.