Beauchamp's Career -- Volume 4

defended himself, from the charge that he entertained ultimate designs in regard to the really abominable scrawl, which was like a child's drawing of ocean with here and there a sail capsiz

-convicted villain-the criminal caught in the act; we try it and convict it by instinct without the ceremony of a jury; and so thoroughly aware of our promptitude in this respect has our arch- enemy become since his mediaeval disgraces that his pa

le penmanship. Lord Palmet did the same

entreated, adjured to look, in Captain Baskelett's peculiarly pursuing fashion; a 'nay, but you shall,' th

the main resembling an extremely far-sighted plot, whereat he gazed back with fondness, all the while protesting sincerely his perfect innocence of anything of the kind. Circumstances will often interwind with the moods of simply irritated men. In the present instance he could just perceive what might immediately come of his reading out of this atrocious epistle wherein Nevil Beauchamp was displayed the dangling puppet of a mountebank wire- pulley, infidel, agitator, leveller,

dful in their affection. But an heiress is a distinct species among women; he hungered for the heiress; his elevation to Parliament made him regard her as both the ornament and the prop of his position; and it should be added that his pride, all the habits of thought of a conqueror of women, had been shocked by that stupefying rejection of him, which Cecilia had intimated to her father with the mere lowering of her eyelids. Conceive the highest bidder at an auction hearing the article announce that it will not have him! Capt

r thirst for prospects, nor counting upon harvests; for seed sown in faith day by day

old Nevil's pencil.' He promised to do a little roaring whenever it occurred, and continued with g

et caetera.

sury; these are tricks of the usurer to grasp his gold in

em, re

e have in history durable testification that our seasons come in the souls of men, yea, as a planet that we have set in motion,

you will have N

in primeval slime; or say, in the so-called teachers of men, as much of life as pricks the frog in March to stir and y

ver hear? The flaccid

gger to the heart of time, and put the axe to human growth!-that one circle of wisdom issuing of the experience and needs of their day, should act the despot over all other circles

elieve the old rascal Shrapnel has himself. And pray be patient, my dear colonel. You wil

The creed is much what it was when the followers diverged it from the Founder. But humanity is not where it was when

eatens

is disciples, who see how far it was in him to do service; not they that made of his creed a strait-jacket for humanity. So, in our prayers we dedicate the world to God, not calling him great for a title, no-showing him we know him gre

h!' Colonel Hal

silence with an ineffable look of entreaty, f

d source of strength; its thread of conjunction with them. Prayer for an object is the cajolery of an idol; the resource of superstition. There you misread it, Beauchamp. We that fight the living world must have the universal for succour of the truth in it. Cast forth the soul in prayer, you meet the efuence of the outer truth, you join with the creative elements giving breath to you; and that crust of habit which is the soul's tomb; and custom

y more of it!' exclaimed the co

ett: 'Isn't it like what we u

in Baskelett had undertaken to skip, and was murmuring

l's mark-"We are not parties to the tacit agreement to fill our mouths and shut our eyes. We speak because it is better they be roused to lapidate us than soused in their sty, with none to let them hear they live like swine, craving only not to be disturbed at the trough. The religion of this vast English middle-class ruling the land is Comfort. It is their central thought; their idea of necessity; their sole aim. Whatsoever ministers to Comfort, seems to belong to it, pretends to support it, they yield their passive worship to. Whatsoever alarms it they join to crush. There you get at their point of unity. They will pay for the security of Comfort, calling it national worship, or national defence, if too much mon

ur sovereigns are well-conducted persons, and we cannot unseat them-observe; he is eminently explicit, the old traitor!-we are to submit to the outward forms of respect, but we are frankly to say we are Republicans; he has the impudence to swear that England is a Republican country, and calls our thoroughgoing loyalty -yours and mine, colonel-disloyalty. Hark: "Where kings lead, it

s hanging!' said

ld you bid for the loyalty of a class shivering under deprivation of luxuries, with its God Comfort beggared? Ay, my Beauchamp,"-the most offensive thing to me is that "my Beauchamp," but old Nevil has evidently given himself up hand and foot to this ruffian-"ay, when you reflect that fear of the so-called rabble, i.e. the people, the unmoneyed class, which knows not Comfort, tastes not of luxuries, is the main component of their noisy frigid loyalty, and that the people are not with them but against, and yet that the people might be won by visible forthright kingly service to a loyalty outdoing theirs as the sun the moon; ay, that the people verily thirst to love and reverence; and that their love is the only love worth having, because it is disinterested love, and endures,

ett threw hi

re, I say, the power, worth the seduction of by another Power not mighty in England now: and likely in time to set up yet another Power not existing in England now. What if a passive comfortable clergy hand them over to men on the models of Irish pastors, who will succour, console, enfold, champion them? what if, when they have learnt to use their majority, sick of deceptions and the endless pulling of interests, they raise ONE representative to force the current of action with

out for Colonel Halkett to read an unmentionab

ish for is not approaching divine compared with the

y stand a chance of losing rich as well as poor! It should awaken them. The helpless poor and the uneasy rich are alike open to the seductions of Romish priests and in

r you,

mpulsory service of our working man. If India is to be held for the good of India, throw open India to the civilized nations, that they help us in a task that ove

lett explained, 'by-and-

fast e

d Colonel Halkett, flappin

lf and laughed in derision: 'He calls our Constitution a compact unsigned by the larger number involved in it. What's this? "A band of dealers in fleshpottery." Do you detect

an unsavoury expression of

is rather clever,' said Captai

rides the classes under it while it can. It is ego-ego, the fountain cry, origin, sole source of war! Then death to ego, I say! If those traders had ruled for other than ego, power might have rested with them on broad basis enough to carry us forward for centuries. The workmen have ever been too anxious to be ruled. Now comes on the workman's era. Numbers win in the end: proof of sma

iend Nevil in not

Colonel Halkett. 'Never in my

Shrapnel defending Mora

n Bask

I give you my word. Apparently old Nevil has been standing up for every man's right to run away with . . . Yes, really! I give

nd times yes. Rebellion against Society, and advocacy of Humanity, run counter. Tell me Society is the whited sepulchre, that it is blotched, hideous, hollow: and I say, add not another disfigurement to it; add to the purification of it. And you, if you answer, what can only one? I say that is the animal's answer, and applies also to politics, where the question,

, if I go on much further. He covers thirty-two pages of letter-paper. The conclusion is:-"Jenny sends you her complime

Palmet caught the other name: 'Jenny? That's Miss Denham, Jenny Denham; an amazingly pretty

ny accounts for the de

have no doubt Shrapnel

ocialist!' He folded up

is it not,

e tempted her to be the apo

worst, and what's possi

essed on his daughter that the person to whom the letter was addressed must be partly responsible for the

end that lett

'the superior strength of men to women seems to me to come from their examining all subjects,

ing rather heavily. 'I must have a ta