the "strait-waistcoat for humanity." They would fix us to first
principles like tethered sheep or hobbled horses. I should enjoy
replying to him, if I had time. The whole letter is composed of
variations upon one idea. Still I must say the man interests me; I
should like to talk to him.'

Mr. Austin paid no heed to the colonel's 'Dear me! dear me!' of
amazement. He said of the style of the letters, that it was the puffing
of a giant: a strong wind rather than speech: and begged Cecilia to note
that men who labour to force their dreams on mankind and turn vapour into
fact, usually adopt such a style. Hearing that this private letter had
been deliberately read through by Mr. Romfrey, and handed by him to
Captain Baskelett, who had read it out in various places, Mr. Austin
said:

'A strange couple!' He appeared perplexed by his old friend's approval
of them. 'There we decidedly differ,' said he, when the case of Dr.
Shrapnel was related by the colonel, with a refusal to condemn Mr.
Romfrey. He pronounced Mr. Romfrey's charges against Dr. Shrapnel, taken
in conjunction with his conduct, to be baseless, childish, and wanton.
The colonel would not see the case in that light; but Cecilia did. It
was a justification of Beauchamp; and how could she ever have been blind
to it?--scarcely blind, she remembered, but sensitively blinking her
eyelids to distract her sight in contemplating it, and to preserve her
repose. As to Beauchamp's demand of the apology, Mr. Austin considered
that it might be an instance of his want of knowledge of men, yet could
not be called silly, and to call it insane was the rhetoric of an
adversary.

'I do call it insane,' said the colonel.