Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

328 RAVENSEIOE
"And so I am the last of them all; and alone. Hardly one
of them left. Hardly one. And their sons are feeding their
pheasants, and planting their shrubberies still, as we did. And
the things that were terrible realities for us, are only printed
words for them, which they try to realize, but cannot. The
thirty mad long years, through which we stood with our backs: to
the wall, are ticketed as'the revolutionary wars,' and put in a
pigeon-hole. I wish they would do us justice. We were right.
Hainault's pheasants prove it. They must pay their twenty
million a year, and thank us that they have got off so easy.
"I wonder what they would do, in such a pinch as we had.
They seem to be as brave as ever; but I am afraid of their getting too much unbrutalized for another struggle like ours. I
suppose I am wrong, for I am getting too old to appreciate new
ideas, but I am afraid of our getting too soft. It is a bygone
prejudice, I am afraid. One comfort is, that such a struggle can
never come again. If it did, they might have the will to do all
that we did, and more, but have they the power? This extension of the suffrage has played the devil, and now they want to
extend it farther, the madmen! They'11 end by having a
House full of Whigs. And then - why, then, I suppose, there'll
be nothing but Whigs in the House. That seems to me near
about what will happen. Well! well! I was a Whig myself
once on a time.
"All gone. Every one of them. And I left on here, in perfect health and preservation, as much an object of wonder to the
young ones as a dodo would be to a poultry-fancier. Before the
effect of our deeds has been fully felt, our persons have become
strange, and out of date. And yet I, strange to say, don't want
to go yet. I want to see that Ravens~loe boy again. Gad! how
I love that boy. He has just Barkham's sweet, gentle, foolish
way with him. I determined to make him my heir from the
first time I saw him at Ranfbrd, if he turned out well. If I had
announced it, everything would have gone right. What an
endless series of unlucky accidents that poor boy has had.
" Just like Barkham. The same idle, foolish, lovable creature,
with anger for nothing; only furious, blind indignation for injustice and wrong. I wish he would come back. I am getting
aweary of waiting.
"I wonder if I shall see Barkham again, just to sit with my
arm on his shoulder, as I used to on the terrace in old times.
Only for one short half-hour- "
I shall leave off here. I don't want to follow the kind old
heathen through his vague speculations about a future state. You
see how he had loved his son. You see why he loved Charles.
That is all I wished to show you.