William Pitt Pitt Scargill A NOVEL. BY THE AUTHOR OF "TRUCKLEBOROUGH-HALL." When once he's made a Lord, Who'll be so saucy as to think he can Cook. Why, Sir, 'tis neither satire nor moral, but the mere passage MARSTON. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. LONDON: PUBLISHED FOR HENRY COLBURN, BY RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1835. RANK AND TALENT. CHAPTER I. แ th' high vulgar of the town, COOPER. WE left Dr. Crack at the end of the last volume in a fair way of falling deeply in love with Miss Henderson, and there, for the present, we will leave him still, conscious that no one envies him. Our attention is now required in another quarter. The gentle, unobtrusive VOL. III. A (RECAP) 3918 .41 .374 Clara Rivolta, whom nature indeed had never destined to be a heroine or even to be talked about, continued to undergo with much forbearance and quietness the persecuting attentions of the fragrant Henry Augustus Tippetson, who divided his time and attentions between the Countess of Trimmerstone and the grand-daughter of old John Martindale. What points of resemblance there were between these two ladies is not easy to say. Tippetson, however, thought much of rank: it was so great an honor to be intimate with a countess. Every body said that Tippetson was too intimate with the Countess, and another every body said that he was going to be married to Clara Rivolta. Our readers must have observed that we are in general tolerably candid. But sometimes we do find ourselves glowing with an indignation not easily expressed, and feeling a contempt, for the conveyance of which no ordinary terms or allowed language will suffice. This contempt and this indignation do we now feel for that most execrable fribble, for that most attenuated shred of a dandikin, Henry Augustus Tippetson. Singleton Sloper is a lazy, ignorant lob, and Dr. Crack is a conceited puppy; but in neither of these two do we discern any thing at all equivalent in moral turpitude to that effeminate, that more than unmanly, that almost inhuman selfishness that disgraces, or rather constitutes, the character of Tippetson. This young gentleman had learned by rote the common places of polished society, and he played them off with a vile, cunning dexterity on the simple Clara Rivolta, till she was almost deceived as to his character. Her mind had been injured, though unintentionally, by the trumpery sentimentality of Miss Henderson's foolish correspondence. The circumstances, also, of Mr. Martindale's oddness of character, of Signora Rivolta's retired habits, and of the Colonel's general indifference to every thing, allowed to Clara but little opportunity of seeing or learning the world and its moral elements. Markham now but seldom paid his visits. When he did, he was sure to find Tippetson there before him, or soon after he entered the |