It was a comfortable mood in which to sit down to dinner and Harry’s presence also added to his pleasure, for it promised him some conversation not altogether feminine. Indeed, though the dinner was a simple family one, it was a very delightful meal. Leyland quoted some of his shortest and finest lines, Lady Jane merrily recalled childish episodes in which Harry and herself played the principal rôles, and Katherine made funny little corrections and additions to her sister’s picturesque childish adventures; also, being healthily hungry, she ate a second supply of her favorite pudding and thus made everyone comfortably sure that for all her charm and loveliness, she was yet a creature
Not too bright and good,
For human nature’s daily food.
They lingered long at the happy table and were still laughing and cracking nuts round it when De Burg was announced. He was accompanied by a new member of Parliament from Carlisle and the conversation drifted quickly to politics. De Burg wanted to know if Leyland was going to The House. He thought there would be a late sitting and said there was a tremendous crowd round the parliament buildings, “but,” he added, “my friend was amazed at the dead silence which pervaded it, and, indeed, if you compare this voiceless manifestation of popular feeling with the passionate turbulence of the same crowd, it is very remarkable.”
“And it is much more dangerous,” answered Ley-land. “The voiceless anger of an English crowd is very like the deathly politeness of the man who brings you a challenge. As soon as they become quiet they are ready for action. We are apt to call them uneducated, but in politics they have been well taught by their leaders who are generally remarkably clever men, and it is said also that one man in seventeen among our weavers can read and perhaps even sign his name.”
“That one is too many,” replied De Burg. “It makes them dangerous. Yet men like Lord Brougham are always writing and talking about it being our duty to educate them.”
“Why, Sir Brougham formed a society for ‘The Diffusion of Useful Knowledge’ four or five years ago—an entirely new sort of knowledge for working men—knowledge relating to this world, personal and municipal. That is how he actually described his little sixpenny books. Then some Scotchman called Chambers began to publish a cheap magazine. I take it. It is not bad at all—but things like these are going to make literature cheap and common.”
“And I heard my own clergyman say that he considered secular teaching of the poor classes to be hostile to Christianity.”
Then Lady Jane remarked—as if to herself—“How dangerous to good society the Apostles must have been!”
Leyland smiled at his wife and answered, “They were. They changed it altogether.”