'Oh, Miss Lavington,' cried he, impatiently, 'will you, too, send me
back to that cold abstraction? I came to you, however presumptuous,
for living, human advice to a living, human heart; and will you pass
off on me that Proteus-dream the Church, which in every 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 a body of
men who are daily excommunicating each other as heretics and
apostates; now a universal idea; now the narrowest and most
exclusive of all parties. Really, before you ask me to hear the
Church, I have a right to ask you to define what the Church is.'

'Our Articles define it,' said Argemone drily.

'The "Visible Church," at least, it defines as "a company of
faithful men, in which," etc. But how does it define the
"Invisible" one? And what does "faithful" mean? What if I thought
Cromwell and Pierre Leroux infinitely more faithful men in their
way, and better members of the "Invisible Church," than the
torturer-pedant Laud, or the facing bothways Protestant-Manichee
Taylor?'

It was lucky for the life of young Love that the discussion went no
further: Argemone was becoming scandalised beyond all measure.
But, happily, the colonel interposed,--

'Look here; tell me if you know for whom this sketch is meant?'