inevitable evils; he said public patience was a camel, on whose back the last atom that could be borne had already been laid, and that resistance was now a duty; the widespread spirit of disaffection against constituted authorities he regarded as the most promising sign of the times; the masters, he allowed, were truly aggrieved, but their main grievances had been heaped on them by a ‘corrupt, base, and bloody’ Government (these were Mr. Yorke’s epithets). Madmen like Pitt, demons like Castlereagh, mischievous idiots like Perceval, were the tyrants, the curses of the country, the destroyers of her trade. It was their infatuated perseverance in an unjustifiable, a hopeless, a ruinous war, which had brought the nation to its present pass. It was their monstrously oppressive taxation, it was the infamous ‘Orders in Council’ —the originators of which deserved impeachment and the scaffold, if ever public men did—that hung a millstone about England’s neck.

‘But where was the use of talking?’ he demanded. ‘What chance was there of reason being heard in a land that was King-ridden, priest-ridden, peer-ridden; where a lunatic was the nominal monarch, an unprincipled debauchee the real ruler; where such an insult to common-sense as hereditary legislators was tolerated; where such a humbug as a bench of Bishops, such an arrogant abuse as a pampered, persecuting established Church, was endured and venerated; where a standing army was maintained, and a host of lazy parsons and their pauper families were kept on the fat of the land?’

Mr. Helstone, rising up and putting on his shovel hat, observed in reply, ‘That in the course of his life he had met with two or three instances where sentiments of this sort had been very bravely maintained so long as health, strength, and worldly prosperity had been the allies of him who professed them; but there came a time,’ he said, ‘to all men, “when the keepers of the house should tremble; when they should be afraid of that which is high, and fear should be in the way,” and that time was the test of the advocate of anarchy and rebellion, the enemy of religion and order. Ere now,’ he affirmed, ‘he had been called upon to read those prayers our Church has provided for the sick by the miserable dying bed of one of her most rancorous foes; he had seen such a one stricken with remorse, solicitous to discover a place for repentance, and unable to find any, though he sought it carefully with tears. He must forewarn Mr. Yorke that blasphemy against God and the King was a deadly sin, and that there was such a thing as “judgment to come.” ’

Mr. Yorke ‘believed fully that there was such a thing as judgment to come. If it were otherwise, it would be difficult to imagine how all the scoundrels who seemed triumphant in this world, who broke innocent hearts with impunity, abused unmerited privileges, were a scandal to honourable callings, took the bread out of the mouths of the poor, browbeat the humble, and truckled meanly to the rich and proud—were to be properly paid off, in such coin as they had earned. But,’ he added, ‘whenever he got low-spirited about such-like goings-on, and their seeming success in this mucky lump of a planet, he just reached down t’ owd Book’ (pointing to a great Bible in the bookcase), ‘opened it like at a chance, and he was sure to light of a verse blazing wi’ a blue brimstone low that set all straight. He knew,’ he said, ‘where some folk war bound for, just as weel as if an angel wi’ great white wings had come in ower t’ door- stone and told him.’

‘Sir,’ said Mr. Helstone, collecting all his dignity— ‘sir, the great knowledge of man is to know himself and the bourne whither his own steps tend.’

‘Ay, ay; you’ll recollect, Mr. Helstone, that Ignorance was carried away from the very gates of heaven, borne through the air, and thrust in at a door in the side of the hill which led down to hell.’

‘Nor have I forgotten, Mr. Yorke, that Vain-Confidence, not seeing the way before him, fell into a deep pit, which was on purpose there made by the prince of the grounds to catch vain-glorious fools withal, and was dashed to pieces with his fall.’

‘Now,’ interposed Mr. Moore, who had hitherto sat a silent but amused spectator of this wordy combat, and whose indifference to the party politics of the day, as well as to the gossip of the neighbourhood, made him an impartial, if apathetic, judge of the merits of such an encounter, ‘you have both sufficiently