journey to them and the purport of it, he said, with the mask upon glee:
'Then Victor has met his match!' Nataly had sent for him to dine with
her in Victor's absence: she was far from grieved, as to the result, by
his assurance to her, that Victor had not a chance. Colney thought so.
'Just like him! to be off gaily to try and overcome or come over the
greatest power in England.' They were England herself; the squat old
woman she has become by reason of her overlapping numbers of the
comfortable fund-holder annuitants: a vast body of passives and
negatives, living by precept, according to rules of precedent,
and supposing themselves to be righteously guided because of their
continuing undisturbed. Them he branded, as hypocritical materialists,
and the country for pride in her sweetmeat plethora of them:--mixed with
an ancient Hebrew fear of offence to an inscrutable Lord, eccentrically
appeasable through the dreary iteration of the litany of sinfulness.
He was near a truth; and he had the heat of it on him.

Satirists in their fervours might be near it to grasp it, if they could
be moved to moral distinctness, mental intention, with a preference of
strong plain speech over the crack of their whips. Colney could not or
would not praise our modern adventurous, experimental, heroic, tramping
active, as opposed to yonder pursy passives and negatives; he had
occasions for flicking the fellow sharply: and to speak of the Lord as
our friend present with us, palpable to Reason, perceptible to natural
piety solely through the reason, which justifies punishment; that would
have stopped his mouth upon the theme of God-forsaken creatures. Our
satirist is an executioner by profession, a moralist in excuse, or at the
tail of it; though he thinks the position reversed, when he moralizes
angrily to have his angry use of the scourge condoned. Nevertheless, he
fills a serviceable place; and certainly he is not happy in his business.
Colney suffered as heavily as he struck. If he had been no more than a