none to let them hear they live like swine, craving only not to be
disturbed at the trough. The religion of this vast English middle-class
ruling the land is Comfort. It is their central thought; their idea of
necessity; their sole aim. Whatsoever ministers to Comfort, seems to
belong to it, pretends to support it, they yield their passive worship
to. Whatsoever alarms it they join to crush. There you get at their
point of unity. They will pay for the security of Comfort, calling it
national worship, or national defence, if too much money is not
subtracted from the means of individual comfort: if too much foresight
is not demanded for the comfort of their brains. Have at them there.
Speak. Moveless as you find them, they are not yet all gross clay, and I
say again, the true word spoken has its chance of somewhere alighting and
striking root. Look not to that. Seeds perish in nature; good men fail.
Look to the truth in you, and deliver it, with no afterthought of hope,
for hope is dogged by dread; we give our courage as hostage for the
fulfilment of what we hope. Meditate on that transaction. Hope is for
boys and girls, to whom nature is kind. For men to hope is to tremble.
Let prayer--the soul's overflow, the heart's resignation--supplant it .
. ."

'Pardon, colonel; I forgot to roar, but old Nevil marks all down that
page for encomium,' said Captain Baskelett. 'Oh! here we are. English
loyalty is the subject. Now, pray attend to this, colonel. Shrapnel
communicates to Beauchamp that if ten Beauchamps were spouting over the
country without intermission he might condescend to hope. So on--to
British loyalty. We are, so long as our sovereigns are well-conducted
persons, and we cannot unseat them--observe; he is eminently explicit,
the old traitor!--we are to submit to the outward forms of respect, but
we are frankly to say we are Republicans; he has the impudence to swear
that England is a Republican country, and calls our thoroughgoing loyalty