Beauchamp's Career — Volume 3 by George Meredith
page 26 of 114 (22%)
page 26 of 114 (22%)
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feasted, with no fear of the intrusion of a third, and your backs were
turned on the noisy lower world, your ears were deaf to it. Apply we now the knocker to the door of venerable Quotation, and call the aged creature forth, that he, half choked by his eheu!-- 'A sound between a sigh and bray,' may pronounce the familiar but respectable words, the burial-service of a time so happy! Mr. Grancey Lespel would still have been sitting for Bevisham (or politely at this elective moment bowing to resume the seat) had not those Manchester jugglers caught up his cry, appropriated his colours, displaced and impersonated him, acting beneficent Whig on a scale approaching treason to the Constitution; leaning on the people in earnest, instead of taking the popular shoulder for a temporary lift, all in high party policy, for the clever manoeuvre, to oust the Tory and sway the realm. See the consequences. For power, for no other consideration, those manufacturing rascals have raised Radicalism from its primaeval mire--from its petty backslum bookseller's shop and public-house back- parlour effluvia of oratory--to issue dictates in England, and we, England, formerly the oak, are topsy-turvy, like onions, our heels in the air! The language of party is eloquent, and famous for being grand at illustration; but it is equally well known that much of it gives us humble ideas of the speaker, probably because of the naughty temper party is prone to; which, while endowing it with vehemence, lessens the stout circumferential view that should be taken, at least historically. |
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