The Squire's lip trembled.
"My dear Mr. Hazeldean," said the Parson, taking his friend's hand, "I don't want to parade my superior wisdom; but if you had taken my advice, quieta non movere. Was there ever a parish so peaceable as this, or a country-gentleman so beloved as you were, before you undertook the task which has dethroned kings and ruined states—that of wantonly meddling with antiquity, whether for the purpose of uncalled-for repairs, or the revival of obsolete uses."
At this rebuke the Squire did not manifest his constitutional tendencies to choler; but he replied almost meekly, "If it were to do again, faith, I would leave the parish to the enjoyment of the shabbiest pair of Stocks that ever disgraced a village. Certainly I meant it for the best—an ornament to the green; however, now they are rebuilt, the Stocks must be supported. Will Hazeldean is not the man to give way to a set of thankless rapscallions."
"I think," said the Parson, "that you will allow that the House of Tudor, whatever its faults, was a determined, resolute dynasty enough—high-hearted and strong-headed. A Tudor would never have fallen into the same calamities as the poor Stuart did!"
"What the plague has the House of Tudor got to do with my Stocks?"
"A great deal. Henry the VIII. found a subsidy so unpopular that he gave it up; and the people, in return, allowed him to cut off as many heads as he pleased, besides those in his own family. Good Queen Bess, who, I know, is your idol in history—"
"To be sure!—she knighted my ancestor at Tilbury Fort."
"Good Queen Bess struggled hard to maintain a certain monopoly; she saw it would not do, and she surrendered it with that frank heartiness which becomes a sovereign, and makes surrender a grace."
"Ha! and you would have me give up the Stocks?"
"I would much rather they had staid as they were, before you touched them; but, as it is, if you could find a good plausible pretext—and there is an excellent one at hand—the sternest kings open prisons, and grant favors, upon joyful occasions. Now a marriage in the royal family is of course a joyful occasion!—and so it should be in that of the King of Hazeldean." Admire that artful turn in the Parson's eloquence!—it was worthy of Riccabocca himself. Indeed, Mr. Dale had profited much by his companionship with that Machiavellian intellect.