an army of bastards, mercenaries professing the practicable for pay.
They know us the motive force, the Tories the resisting power, and they
feign to aid us in battering our enemy, that they may stop the shock.
We fight, they profit. What are they? Stranded Whigs, crotchetty
manufacturers; dissentient religionists; the half-minded, the hare-
hearted; the I would and I would-not--shifty creatures, with youth's
enthusiasm decaying in them, and a purse beginning to jingle; fearing
lest we do too much for safety, our enemy not enough for safety. They a
party? Let them take action and see! We stand a thousand defeats; they
not one! Compromise begat them. Once let them leave sucking the teats
of compromise, yea, once put on the air of men who fight and die for a
cause, they fly to pieces. And whither the fragments? Chiefly, my
friend, into the Tory ranks. Seriously so I say. You between future and
past are for the present--but with the hunted look behind of all godless
livers in the present. You Liberals are Tories with foresight, Radicals
without faith. You start, in fear of Toryism, on an errand of
Radicalism, and in fear of Radicalism to Toryism you draw back. There is
your pendulum-swing!'

Lectures to this effect were delivered by Dr. Shrapnel throughout the
day, for his private spiritual solace it may be supposed, unto Lydiard,
Turbot, Beauchamp, or whomsoever the man chancing to be near him, and
never did Sir Oracle wear so extraordinary a garb. The favourite
missiles of the day were flour-bags. Dr. Shrapnel's uncommon height, and
his outrageous long brown coat, would have been sufficient to attract
them, without the reputation he had for desiring to subvert everything
old English. The first discharges gave him the appearance of a thawing
snowman. Drenchings of water turned the flour to ribs of paste, and in
colour at least he looked legitimately the cook's own spitted hare,
escaped from her basting ladle, elongated on two legs. It ensued that