'I approve that sentiment very much, Mr. Trevor,' interrupted Enoch. 'It is prodigious fine. It is my own. All men are liable to be mistaken. I have said it a thousand times. It is prodigious fine!'

'But I cannot conceive,' added I, 'that to overturn systems which are founded in vice and folly would be to overturn all order. You may call systematic selfishness, systematic hypocrisy, and systematic oppression order: but I assert they are disorder.'

'My dear fellow, nothing is so easy as to assert. But we will leave this to another time. I dare say that in the main there is no great difference between us. You wish for all the good things you can get; and so do I. One of us may take a more round about way to obtain them than the other: but we both intend to travel to the same goal. I own, when I heard of your brouillerie with my friend Idford, I thought you had missed the road. But I find you have more wit than I supposed: you are now guided by another finger-post. Perhaps it might have been as well not to have changed. The treasury bench is a strong hold, and never was so well fortified. It is become impregnable. It includes the whole power of England, Scotland, and Ireland; both the Indies; countless islands, and boundless continents: with all the grand out-works of lords, spiritual and temporal; governors; generals; admirals; custos rotulorum, and magistracy; bodies corporate, and chartered companies; excise, and taxation; board and bankruptcy commissioners; contractors; agents; jobbers; money-lenders, and spies; with all the gradations of these and many more distinct classes: understrappers innumerable; an endless swarm; a monstrous mass. Can it be conjured away by angry breath? No, no. It is no house of cards: for an individual to attempt to puff it down would be ridiculous insanity.'

'A mass indeed! "Making Ossa like a wart." Yet the rubbish must be removed; and it is mine and every man's duty to handle the spade and besom. But men want to work miracles; and, because the mountain does not vanish at a word, they rashly conclude it cannot be diminished. They are mistaken. Political error is a pestilential cloud; dense with mephitic and deadly vapours: but a wind has arisen in the south, that will drive it over states, kingdoms, and empires; till at last it shall be swept from the face of the earth.'

'My dear fellow, you have an admirable genius: but you have mistaken its bent. Depend upon it, you are no politician: though you are a very great poet. Fine phrases, grand metaphors, beautiful images, all very admirable! and you have them at command. You are born to be an ornament to your country. You have a very pretty turn. Very pretty indeed! And so, which is the point that I was coming to, concerning this pamphlet. It relates I think to certain letters that appeared, signed Themistocles.'

'And to a defence, by my lord the bishop, of the thirty nine articles,' added Ellis: eager that he and his patron should not be omitted.

'You, my dear fellow, had some part in both of these publications.'

'I do not know what you mean by some part. The substance of them both was my own.'

'Ay, ay; you had a share: a considerable share. You and Idford were friends. You conversed together, and communicated your thoughts to each other. Did not you?'

'I grant we did.'