allowably proud of my ancestry," said the young candidate, "yet my ancestry gives me no help in this contest, which is entirely one of the present, the real, the personal. Nay more, my said ancestry blocks the way, as I brace up to confront true battle; and I may well envy, for this occasion at least, those of my opponents who are, in that respect, wholly unencumbered in their march. If I have indeed succeeded in making myself not unknown to literary fame, and to a great audience even far beyond my own country; if society's many sorrows have not seldom touched my heart, and directed my steps to bereaved homes around me, remember, in my behalf, that all this is in spite of high ancestry, and of the time-absorbing pre-occupations of an exacting social condition, entirely beyond my own choosing, and certainly of the very smallest advantage to me with its special handicapping in the present race. And may I not plead also, that the past liberality of a great nation, in providing but too amply for my family and myself, however honourable to the giving party, has yet, in all its paralyzing effects, proved by no means the least of the obstacles besetting my path in this my ambitious race for a new and a true crown?"
Let us here glance, parenthetically, at another characteristic incident, which added its variety to the Berkshire programme. Just as all the Berkshire addresses had been concluded, and the vote was about to be taken, with all the rapidity and precision of advanced scientific arrangement in these matters, so as to conclude the whole procedure within the business day, word was brought that the adjacent county of Oxford had just signally distinguished itself by a noble
