Conclusion
The Senator for Mickewa, whose name we have taken
for a book which might perhaps have been better called
“The Chronicle of a Winter at Dillsborough”—did
not stay long in London after the unfortunate close
of his lecture. He was a man not very pervious
to criticism, nor afraid of it, but he did not like
the treatment he had received at St. James’s
Hall, nor the remarks which his lecture produced in
the newspapers. He was angry because people were
unreasonable with him, which was surely unreasonable
in him who accused Englishmen generally of want of
reason. One ought to take it as a matter of course
that a bull should use his horns, and a wolf his teeth.
The Senator read everything that was said of him,
and then wrote numerous letters to the different journals
which had condemned him. Had any one accused
him of an untruth? Or had his inaccuracies been
glaring? Had he not always expressed his readiness
to acknowledge his own mistake if convicted of ignorance?
But when he was told that he had persistently trodden
upon all the corns of his English cousins, he declared
that corns were evil things which should be abolished,
and that with corns such as these there was no mode
of abolition so efficacious as treading on them.
“I am sorry that you should have encountered
anything so unpleasant,” Lord Drummond said
to him when he went to bid adieu to his friend at
the Foreign Office.
“And I am sorry too, my Lord;—for
your sake rather than my own. A man is in a bad
case who cannot endure to hear of his faults.”
“Perhaps you take our national sins a little
too much for granted.”
“I don’t think so, my Lord. If you
knew me to be wrong you would not be so sore with
me. Nevertheless I am under deep obligation for
kind-hearted hospitality. If an American can make
up his mind to crack up everything he sees here, there
is no part of the world in which he can get along
better.” He had already written a long
letter home to his friend Mr. Josiah Scroome, and had
impartially sent to that gentleman not only his own
lecture, but also a large collection of the criticisms
made on it. A few weeks afterwards he took his
departure, and when we last heard of him was thundering
in the Senate against certain practices on the part
of his own country which he thought to be unjust to
other nations. Don Quixote was not more just
than the Senator, or more philanthropic,—nor
perhaps more apt to wage war against the windmills.
Having in this our last chapter given the place of
honour to the Senator, we must now say a parting word
as to those countrymen of our own who have figured
in our pages. Lord Rufford married Miss Penge
of course, and used the lady’s fortune in buying
the property of Sir John Purefoy. We may probably
be safe in saying that the acquisition added very
little to his happiness. What difference can
