‘What then?’ said the man in black, ‘why she will be true to herself. Let Dissenters, whether they be Church of England, as perhaps they may still call themselves, Methodist, or Presbyterian, presume to grumble, and there shall be bruising of lips in pulpits, tying up to whipping-posts, cutting off ears and noses - he! he! the farce of King Log has been acted long enough; the time for Queen Stork’s tragedy is drawing nigh’; and the man in black sipped his gin and water in a very exulting manner.

‘And this is the Church which, according to your assertion in the public-house, never persecutes?’

‘I have already given you an answer,’ said the man in black. ‘With respect to the matter of the public- house, it is one of the happy privileges of those who belong to my Church to deny in the public- house what they admit in the dingle; we have high warranty for such double speaking. Did not the foundation stone of our Church, Saint Peter, deny in the public-house what he had previously professed in the valley?’

‘And do you think,’ said I, ‘that the people of England, who have shown aversion to anything in the shape of intolerance, will permit such barbarities as you have described?’

‘Let them become Papists,’ said the man in black; ‘only let the majority become Papists, and you will see.’

‘They will never become so,’ said I; ‘the good sense of the people of England will never permit them to commit such an absurdity.’

‘The good sense of the people of England!’ said the man in black, filling himself another glass.

‘Yes,’ said I, ‘the good sense of not only the upper, but the middle and lower classes.’

‘And of what description of people are the upper class?’ said the man in black, putting a lump of sugar into his gin and water.

‘Very fine people,’ said I, ‘monstrously fine people; so, at least, they are generally believed to be.’

‘He! he!’ said the man in black; ‘only those think them so who don’t know them. The male part of the upper class are in youth a set of heartless profligates; in old age, a parcel of poor, shaking, nervous paillards. The female part, worthy to be the sisters and wives of such wretches - unmarried, full of cold vice, kept under by vanity and ambition, but which, after marriage, they seek not to restrain; in old age, abandoned to vapours and horrors; do you think that such beings will afford any obstacle to the progress of the Church in these regions, as soon as her movements are unfettered?’

‘I cannot give an opinion; I know nothing of them, except from a distance. But what think you of the middle classes?’

‘Their chief characteristic,’ said the man in black, ‘is a rage for grandeur and gentility; and that same rage makes us quite sure of them in the long run. Everything that’s lofty meets their unqualified approbation; whilst everything humble, or, as they call it, "low," is scouted by them. They begin to have a vague idea that the religion which they have hitherto professed is low; at any rate, that it is not the religion of the mighty ones of the earth, of the great kings and emperors whose shoes they have a vast inclination to kiss, nor was used by the grand personages of whom they have read in their novels and romances, their Ivanhoes, their Marmions, and their Ladies of the Lake.’

‘Do you think that the writings of Scott have had any influence in modifying their religious opinions?’

‘Most certainly I do,’ said the man in black. ‘The writings of that man have made them greater fools than they were before. All their conversation now is about gallant knights, princesses, and cavaliers, with which his pages are stuffed - all of whom were Papists, or very High Church, which is nearly the same thing; and they are beginning to think that the religion of such nice sweet- scented gentry must be something very superfine. Why, I know at Birmingham the daughter of an ironmonger, who screeches to