word of this speech; and they said it was most unfair that Mr. G. should be tried by words that were evidently spoken on the spur of the moment, and quite in confidence to themselves.
But in the meantime it was a magnificent display of eloquence, and the ladies of the party who were unused to public oratory were very much excited by it. Even Mrs. Douglas owned she was glad to have heard him once: she had no doubt that she should soon get used to the sort of thing, and see the fallacy and absurdity of long speeches; but for this once she had really rather have heard it than not, even though she had had the most uncomfortable bench to sit on that she had ever met with in her life, and though she was half starved in consequence of the waiter having whisked away her soup before she had touched it. Lady Portmore took joy on the occasion, in consequence of her having always prophesied that G. would make a capital speaker; and she could also venture to assert that his notions about trade were safe, and to be depended on, and she approved highly of what he had said. Mr. G., who liked a joke, contrived, by an allusion to foreign politics, to bring up La Grange, who was longing to astonish the natives by the purity of his English, and made a speech which in some respects was satisfactory, though he told them that the opening of the bridge was the finest imposition he had ever seen, that he should always consider that day the handsomest day of his life; that he was not to be regarded upon as a stranger, though he had never seen them before, for that he was as perfectly their compatriot in heart as in language; that it was his pride to be taken in as an Englishman wherever he went; and that from the bottom of his heart he drank their excellent healths.
The day concluded as satisfactorily as it had begun; Fisherwick came home slightly elevated, and so elated with the dinner and the speech, that after asking each of
