Page:Vivian Grey, Volume 1.djvu/224

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214
VIVIAN GREY.

ings: here, Liberal Snake, the celebrated Political Economist, was lecturing to a knot of terrified country gentlemen, and there a celebrated Italian improvisatore poured forth to an ignorant and admiring audience, all the dullness of his inspiration. Vivian Grey was holding an earnest conversation in one of the recesses with Mr. Stapylton Toad.—He had already charmed that worthy, by the deep interest which he took in every thing relating to elections, and the House of Commons, and now they were hard at work on the Corn Laws. Although they agreed upon the main points, and Vivian's ideas upon this important subject had, of course, been adopted after studying with intenseness Mr. Toad's "most luminous and convincing pamphlet," still there were a few minor points, on which Vivian "was obliged to confess," that "he did not exactly see his way." Mr. Toad was astonished, but argumentative, and of course, in due time, had made a convert of his companion;