one mode of distribution, is better than a greater commercial
value, with another mode of distribution; the whole of that curious
fabric of postulates and dogmas, which you call the science of
political economy, and which I call politicae aeconomiae
inscientia, tumbles to pieces."

Mr. Toogood agreed with Mr. Chainmail against Mr. Mac Quedy, that
the existing state of society was worse than that of the twelfth
century; but he agreed with Mr. Mac Quedy against Mr. Chainmail,
that it was in progress to something much better than either--to
which "something much better" Mr. Toogood and Mr. Mac Quedy
attached two very different meanings.

Mr. Chainmail fought with Doctor Folliott, the battle of the
romantic against the classical in poetry; and Mr. Skionar contended
with Mr. Mac Quedy for intuition and synthesis, against analysis
and induction in philosophy.

Mr. Philpot would lie along for hours, listening to the gurgling of
the water round the prow, and would occasionally edify the company
with speculations on the great changes that would be effected in
the world by the steam-navigation of rivers: sketching the course
of a steamboat up and down some mighty stream which civilisation
had either never visited, or long since deserted; the Missouri and
the Columbia, the Oroonoko and the Amazon, the Nile and the Niger,
the Euphrates and the Tigris, the Oxus and the Indus, the Ganges
and the Hoangho; under the over canopying forests of the new, or by
the long-silent ruins of the ancient, world; through the shapeless
mounds of Babylon, or the gigantic temples of Thebes.