mime in the motley of satire, he would have sucked compensation from the
acid of his phrases, for the failure to prick and goad, and work
amendment.

He dramatized to Nataly some of the scene going on at the Wells: Victor's
petition; his fugue in urgency of it; the brief reply of Miss Dorothea
and her muted echo Miss Virginia. He was rather their apologist for
refusing. But, as when, after himself listening to their 'views,' he had
deferentially withdrawn from the ladies of Moorsedge, and had then beheld
their strangely-hatted lieutenants and the regiments of the toneless
respectable on the pantiles and the mounts, the curse upon the satirist
impelled him to generalize. The quiet good ladies were multiplied: they
were 'the thousands of their sisters, petticoated or long-coated or buck-
skinned; comfortable annuitants under clerical shepherding, close upon
outnumbering the labourers they paralyze at home and stultify abroad.'
Colney thumped away. The country's annuitants had for type 'the figure
with the helmet of the Owl-Goddess and the trident of the Earth-shaker,
seated on a wheel, at the back of penny-pieces; in whom you see neither
the beauty of nakedness nor the charm of drapery; not the helmet's
dignity or the trident's power; but she has patently that which stops the
wheel; and poseing for representative of an imperial nation, she helps to
pass a penny.' So he passed his epigram, heedless of the understanding
or attention of his hearer; who temporarily misjudged him for a man
impelled by the vanity of literary point and finish, when indeed it was
hot satiric spite, justified of its aim, which crushed a class to extract
a drop of scathing acid, in the interests of the country, mankind as
well. Nataly wanted a picture painted, colours and details, that she
might get a vision of the scene at Moorsedge. She did her best to feel
an omen and sound it, in his question 'whether the yearly increasing army
of the orderly annuitants and their parasites does not demonstrate the