from him like a dart. His style was a curious mixture of foreign
imperfection and rhetoric--a rhetoric, however, by no means affected.
It might have been so in another person, but it was not so in him.

"Going east?" said he.

"Yes."

"If you want company, I'll walk with you. What do you think of the
Friends?"

Zachariah, it will be borne in mind, although he was a Democrat, had
never really seen the world. He belonged to a religious sect. He
believed in the people, it is true, but it was a people of
Cromwellian Independents. He purposely avoided the company of men
who used profane language, and never in his life entered a tavern.
He did not know what the masses really were; for although he worked
with his hands, printers were rather a superior set of fellows, and
his was an old-established shop which took the best of its class.
When brought actually into contact with swearers and drunkards as
patriots and reformers he was more than a little shocked.

"Not much," quoth he.

"Not worse than our virtuous substitute for a sovereign?"

"No, certainly."

"You object to giving them votes, but is not the opinion of the
silliest as good as that of Lord Sidmouth?"