Ellesmere. Ah me! how one wants a moral essayist always at hand to enable one to make use of moral essays.
Milverton. Your rules of law are grand things—the proverbs of justice; yet has not each case its specialities, requiring to be argued with much circumstance, and capable of different interpretations? Words cannot be made into men.
Dunsford. I wonder you answer his sneers, Milverton.
Ellesmere. I must go and see whether words cannot be made into guineas: and then guineas into men is an easy thing. These trains will not wait even for critics, so, for the present, good-bye.
CHAPTER III.
Ellesmere soon wrote us word that he would be able to come down again; and I agreed to be at Worth-Ashton (Milverton’s house) on the day of his arrival. I had scarcely seated myself at our usual place of meeting before the friends entered, and after greeting me, the conversation thus began:
Ellesmere. Upon my word, you people who live in the country have a pleasant time of it. As Milverton was driving me from the station through Durley Wood, there was such a rich smell of pines, such a twittering of birds, so much joy, sunshine, and beauty, that I began to think, if there were no such place as London, it really would be very desirable to live in the country.
Milverton. What a climax! But I am always very suspicious, when Ellesmere appears to be carried away by any enthusiasm, that it will break off suddenly, like the gallop of a post-horse.
Dunsford. Well, what are we to have for our essay!
Milverton. Despair.