With his constituents he was more at ease and more effective. His
seat for Bridgewater was challenged at a general election by Henry
Padwick, a hanger-on to Disraeli and a well-known bookmaker on the
turf, who, with an Irish Colonel Westbrook, tried to cajole the
electors and their wives by extravagant compliments to the town,
its neighbourhood, its denizens; a place celebrated, as Captain
Costigan said of Chatteris, "for its antiquitee, its hospitalitee,
the beautee of its women, the manly fidelitee, generositee, and
jovialitee of its men." Kinglake met them on their own ground. In
his flowery speeches the romance of Sinai and Palestine faded
before the glories of the little Somersetshire town. What was the
Jordan by comparison with the Parrett? Could Libanus or Anti-
Libanus vie with the Mendip and the Quantock Hills? The view
surveyed by Monmouth from St. Mary's Tower on the Eve of Sedgemoor
transcended all the panoramas which the Holy Land or Asia Minor
could present! But his more serious orations were worthy of his
higher fame. In the panic of 1858, when the address of the French
colonels to the Emperor, beseeching to be led against England, had
created serious alarm on this side the Channel, he went down to
Bridgewater to enlighten the West of England.
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