Yeast: a Problem

had haunted her still more. She had heard of his profligacy, his bursts of fierce Berserk-madness; and yet now these very faults, instead of repelling, seemed to attra

determined to concentrate herself for the work, and longed for the moment

il, no doubt. If any readers wish to be fellow-jesters with that personage, they may; but, as sure as old Saxon women-worship r

h, utterly! Art, poetry, science-I believe, after all, that I have only loved them for my own sake, not for theirs, because they would make me something, feed my conceit of my own talents. How infinitely more glorious t

n his friendship for herself. She would have started as from a snake, from the issue which the reader very clearly foresees, that Lancelot would fall in love, not with Young Englandism, but with Arg

rd of self whi

music out

ch, of course, her eloquence always had the victory. She had yet to learn, that it is better sometimes not to settle in one's heart what we shall speak, for the Everla

he was afraid of her-whether he was ashamed of himself or of his crutches, I cannot tell, but I daresay, reader, you are gett

ling, cool under the fiercest sun, brilliant under the blackest clouds.-There, if anywhere, one would have expected to find Arcadia among fertility, loveliness, industry, and wealth. But, alas for the sad reality! the cool breath of those glittering water-meadows too often floats laden with poisonous miasma. Those picturesque villages are generally the perennial h

resent, not to gloat sentimentally over the unreturning Past. But his time was not yet come; and little he thought of all the work which lay ready for him within a mi

bucks and hatchways, and eel-baskets, into the Nun's-pool, and then swept round under the ivied walls, with their fantastic turrets and gables, and little loopholed windows, peering out over the stream, as it hurried down over the shallows to join the race below the mill. A postern door in the walls

ooking Cornishman, some six feet three in height, with thews and sinews in proportion. He was sitting

rooked like a hawk's claws. He kept his left eye always shut, apparently to save trouble in shooting; and squinted, and sniffed, and peered, with a stooping back and protruded chin, as if he were perpetually on the watch for fish, flesh, and fowl, vermin and Christian. The friendship between himself and the Scotch terrier at his heels would have been easily explained by Lessing

n Plantations last night, I'll be sworn,

harm was the

I'll warrant. If I'd been as young as you, I'd have picked a quarrel with him soon enough, and found a cause for

owled the y

old Harry, 'and see if I don't nab him. It won't lay long under the pla

or help to bring fake acc

now, for a keeper to say! Why, if he don't happen to have a snare just t

ay

in, perwided he takes it up, man? If 'twas his'n he'd be all the better pleased. The most notor

stians as if they were vermin, all night, and being cursed by the

re now, on this here very bridge, with "Harry, jump in, you stupid hound!" and "Harry, get out, you one-eyed tailor!" And then, if one of the gentlemen lost a fish with their clumsine

sportsmen; we choose the flies, and we bait the spinning-hooks, and we show them where the fish lie, and then when they've hooked them, they can't

f this 'ere manor, if the landlords was served like the French ones was. Eh, Paul?' chuckled old Harry.

ny day, not only for his master's sake, but for the sake of a single pheasant of his master's; but he hated Tregarva for many

, who had unintentionally overheard the greater part of the convers

nd here's that paternoster as you gave me to rig up. Beautiful minnows,

y'll

, that's all, eh?' and the old fellow toddled off,

ow that, Tregarv

he Cornishman, touching his hat, and then thrusti

al longing-right or wrong-to chat with his inferiors; and

said the keeper, with an

it any oth

lesome as p

arm doe

gue, and rheu

, a little amused by th

e white fog

e's t

where,

d w

ays,

ng. The man looked up at

you'd seen much of the insi

very short work of such a long and serious story. Do you mean tha

d so they are not too bad to bear. But there's

do you

ealthy when they are wo

N

e fed tha

heaven

to sleep, like pil

you mean that the laboure

le, you could walk down and see. I beg your pardon, sir, though, for thinking of such a thing. They are

clergym

s,

s Honori

Almighty b

ey see that al

s, as if trying to avoid an ans

the poor much, sir, at colleg

led, and sho

he stints neither time nor money-the souls of the poor are well looked af

ill-off

he great tithes, they say, are worth better tha

e!' said

ir, he is a kind man, and a good; but the poor don't understand him, nor he them

too fond of

fancy that men's souls were made for the pr

e and redress these

twisted a

e thinks it-that the parsons are afraid of the landlords. They must see these thing

e root of the matter, and go straight to the lan

u. Besides, sir, you must remember, that a man can't quarrel with his own

ends with hi

w else are they to get a farthing for schools, or coal-subscriptions, or lying-in societies, or lending librari

of things, that the labouring man should require all these societies, and chariti

his long time,' quie

is not afraid to tell

ll the devils had come up and played their fiends' tricks b

t tell,' said L

an there was harm already in themselves; and that was no

s a favourite dictum of

get that thou

eeing

that to do wit

charitable great people, sir. When they see poor folk sick or hungry before their eyes, they pull out their purses fast enough, God bless them; for they wouldn't like to be so themselves. But the oppression that goes on all the year round, and the want that goes on all the year round, and the filth, and the lying, and the swearing, and the profligacy, that go on all the year round, and the sickening weight of debt, and the miserable grinding anxiety from ren

tness and majesty which astonished Lance

xtraordinary game

he can't well help seeing it,' answe

ooked at him with a glance, bef

you have a kind heart, and they tell me that you are a great scholar, which would to God I was! so you ought not to condescend to take m

ong the buck-stage,' said Lancelot; 'I must

e beam which stretched out into the pool; and having settled him th

them go again only to sweep them down again and again, till his brain felt a delicious dizziness from the everlasting rush and the everlasting roar. And then below, how it spread, and writhed, and whirled into transparent fans, hissing and twining snakes, polished glass-wreaths, huge crystal bells, which boiled up from the bottom, and dived again beneath long threads of creamy foam, and swung round posts and roots, and rushed blackening under dark weed-fringed boughs, and gnawed at the marly banks, and shook the ever-restless bulrushes, till it was swept away and down over the white pebbles and olive weeds, in one broad rippling sheet of molten silver, towards the distant sea. Downwards it fleeted ever, and bore his thoughts floating on its oily stream; and the great trout, with their yellow sides and peacock backs, l

rn of murm

into hi

things in a man's heart than e

oft voice behind

venture himself along this

lot t

s will rise out of their depths, and "hold up

the beams, and sat down beside Lance

s! Expound to me, now, the meaning of that water-lily leaf and it

ne has just been treating me to her three hundred and

find with such a gracef

!" And, I suppose, if I was just a little more effeminate and pale, with a nice retreating under-jaw and a drooping lip, and a meek, peaking simper, like your starved

why make yourself so sin

it in a long beard, and testify that the very essential idea of Protestantism is the dignity and divinity of man as God made him! Our forefathers were not ashamed of their beards; but now even the soldier is only allowed to keep hi

then, to cutting

fore, they have forgotten that a woman's hair is her glory, for it was given to her for a covering: as says your friend, Paul the Hebrew, who, by

hodox you are!' sai

ist ought to be of all creeds at once? My business is to represent the beautiful, and the

utiful to be worth anything; and so

and if I am to get at the symbolised unseen, it must be through the beauty of the symbolising phenomenon. If I, who live by art, for art,

eauty, who d

ues whate'er h

y of such dreary tinsel abstractions. When you look through the glitter of the words, your "spirit of bea

rom the ideal and all its gl

haps,' and he sighed. 'But at least a person-a living, loving person-all lovely itself, and givin

ned his sk

of which would be Venus with us Pagans, or the Virgin Mary with the Catholics. Look at them! Honoria the dark-symbolic of passionate depth; Argemone the fair, type of intellectual

a sitting this afternoon, I

th left to immortality, or bread either, no

en it leads through such

n both!' cried Argem

ot. 'You must go, at least; my l

tant part in this story, and, therefore, deserves a little notice. Honoria had rescued him from a watery death in the village pond, by means of the colonel,

tood looking over the bridge, and talking-he took for granted, poor thin-skinned f

my presence over his stupid perch! Smoking those horrid

e colonel, with a lo

d have been called at least "saucy"-but Mammon's elect ones may do anything. We

who were chatting and laughing with Claude. She had shown off her fanci

e so shy and lo

not fit for

so? Why will yo

hung down

only society, you will become mor

thinking when you came. My whole heart was fill

for one of Argemone's

the first day of returning to the open air after so frightful a

underst

I was not even then sh

cigar and a

nly. Wh

ell at the moment. The answ

act of worship?' continued our hero. 'How can we bett

and neglect the noble and exquisite forms which the Church has

ling, Miss

she could not help recollecting that there were several Popish books of devotion at t

ished? Do you want to reduce my circular infinite chapel to an oblong hundred-foot one? My sphere harmonies to the Gregorian tones in four parts? My world-wide priesthood, with their endless variety of costume, to one not over-educated gentleman in a white sheet? And my dream

bast. Lancelot evidently meant it as such, but he eyed her al

y compiled by the wisest and holiest of all countries and ages!

in it all, or such as yo

would find it harmonise and methodise every day, every thought for you! But I

t you must

e of the saint

th, I have been

n it! And what

of the world

not find hi

e; that as long as I lived the life I did, he could not dare to cast his pearls before swine by answering my doubts

did he t

ehood which he was retailing. Whenever I feebly interposed an objection to anything he said (for, after all, he talked on), he told me to hear the Catholic Church. I asked him which Catholic Church? He said the English. I asked him whether it was to be the Church of the sixth century, or the thirteenth, or the seventeenth or the eighteenth? He told me the one and eternal Church which belonged as much to the nineteenth century as to the first. I begged to know whether, then, I was to hear the Church according to Simeon, or according to Newman, or according to St. Paul; for

d her still more. But his manner puzzled her most of all. First he would run on with his face turned away, as if soliloquising out into the air, and then suddenly look round at her with most fascinating humility; and, then, in a moment, a dark shade would pass over his countenance, and he would look like one po

knees, and looked up into her bea

e he is not ashamed to be a man?-because he cannot stuff his soul's hunger with cut-and-dried hearsays, but dares to think f

sed, as

ams to perish, about the Alrunen and prophet-maidens, how they charmed our old fighting, hunting forefathers into purity and sweet obedience among their Saxon forests? Has woman forgotten her mission-to look at the heart and have mercy, while cold man looks at the act and condemns? Do you, too, like the rest of mankind, think no-belief better than misbelief; and smile on hypocrisy, lip-assent, practical Atheism, so

eaven's name?' asked Ar

strength, money, every blessing of life but one; and I am

that you wa

call religion, with whom I shoul

?-They tell me so,' said Argemone, with an effo

lot l

when I know more and more daily what I could be?"-That is the mystery; a

one b

Chu

ry man's mouth has a different meaning? In one book, meaning a method of education, only it has never been carried out; in another, a system of polity,-only it has never been realised;-now a set of words written in books, on whose meaning all are divided; now

efine it,' said

e" one? And what does "faithful" mean? What if I thought Cromwell and Pierre Leroux infinitely more faithful men in their way,

ion went no further: Argemone was becoming scandalised b

f you know for whom t

who can doubt?' answe

lot succeede

h such a noble subject! What a grand benevo

he children, cook the food for them, as tenderly as any woman! I found out, last winter, if you will believe it, that he lived on bread and water, to give out of his own wages-which are

do not wonder now at the effect h

?' said Honoria eagerly. 'H

he says, and that I had the power of altering the system a hair, I could find

apped his white

besides the "glorious Past," there is a Present worthy of his sublime notic

unfaithful to your original? why have you, like all a

will be, when the vices of this pitiful civilised world are exploded, and sanitary reform, and a variety of o

ow thoroughly it exemplifies your great law of Protestant art, that "the Ideal is best manifested in the Peculiar." How cla

rnishman, he shou

ow the serpentine curve of his nose, his long nostril, and protruding, sharp-cut lips, mark his share of Ph?nician or Jewish blood! how Norse, again, tha

. He saw it, for he was in love, and young

is hands on his knees, the enormous size of his limbs quite concealed by t

'for the day-star to arise on

d angrily; and yet a sort of sympathy arose

gone too far, and tried

head was alive w

' said Lancelot carelessly; '

und, and uttered

e river! That horrid gazelle has b

the stream was rushing, was the unhappy Mops, alias Scratch, alias Dirty Dick, alias Jack Sheppar

rowned!' quot

g and whining, he plied every leg, while the glassy current

moment the huge form of Tregarva plunged solemnly into the water, with a splash like sev

!' shouted the colonel, with

The colonel caught at him, tore off a piece of his collar-the calm, solemn face

the foam-way. The colonel leapt the bridge-rail like a deer, rushed out along the buck-stage, tore off

was dashing after him, when he fe

ed Argemone. 'You shall no

-creature

in a tone of deep passion. And then, i

ugh his whole frame. She had called him Lanc

she cried; 'lo

tic with terror, while she stared with bursting eyes into the foam. A shriek of disappointment rose from her lips, as in

e me a piece of wood, Lancelot, m

, tore it off by sheer strength, and hurled it far into the pool. Argemone saw it, and remembered it, like a true woman. Ay, be

ot of black curls. In another instant he had hold of the rail, and quietly floating

he beam, passed Argemone and Lancelot without seeing them,

Tregarva to it. Lancelot and two or three workmen, whom h

and watched, silent and motionless, the

pered the wan weather-beaten field dr

s, and commenced trying every restorative means with the ready coolness of a practised surgeon; while Lancelot, whom he ordered about like a b

quiet satisfied smile, while Honoria watched and watched w

inutes

d the colonel, in a despairin

does!' 'He breathes!'

his eye

gone? Sweet dream

lips and burst. She seemed to recollect herself, rose, p