"If having no wife is to be free, you can hardly call him a bondman. Yes."
"What has he ever done to distinguish himself, then? Can you tell me that, Miss Hyde?"
"He is considered a man of brilliant parts, certainly," I answered; "but at his age few men have won permanent distinction, I fancy."
"At his age! Why, the man must be over eight-and-twenty, and half the great men that ever lived had made their mark in the world before they reached that age."
"Well, that may be," I replied; "but in these times greatness is not so easily won. The level of general intelligence, in our country at least, is raised, and it requires great genius, indeed, to lift a man suddenly above his fellows. In a dead sea of ignorance, superior ability looms up with imposing conspicuousness. This is why the great men of past times have cast the reflection of their minds on history;—not entirely because they excelled men of the present age, but from the low grade of popular intelligence that existed around them."
"Why, you talk like a statesman," said the widow, laughing. "I had no idea that anything so near politics existed in the ladies of this house."
"What is history but the politics of the past?" said Jessie. "What is politics but a history of the present?"
"Perhaps you are right," said the widow, flinging off her careless manner, and sitting down on one of the rustic chairs, where she began to dust her skirt with the fanciful whip fastened to her wrist. "I have often wondered why it should be considered unfeminine for an educated woman to understand the institutions of her own or any other country."
Mrs. Dennison looked at me as she spoke. Was the woman playing with my weakness? Or, did she really speak from her heart? If the former, she must have been amused at my credulity, for I answered in honest frankness:
"Nor I, either; except in evil, which is always better unknown. I can fancy no case where ignorance is a merit. Imagine Queen Victoria pluming herself on lady-like ignorance of the political state of her kingdom, when she opens Parliament in person."