Brutus, is because _you_ have no Portia. Turkey has its seraglio for the
person; but custom in Europe has also a seraglio for the mind."

Constance smiled at the philosopher's passion; but she was a woman, and
she was moved by it.

"Perhaps," said she, "in the progress of events, the state of the women
may be improved as well as that of the men."

"Doubtless, at some future stage of the world. And believe me, Lady
Erpingham, politician and schemer as you are, that no legislative reform
alone will improve mankind: it is the social state which requires
reformation."

"But you asked me some minutes since," said Constance, after a pause, "if
the object of my pursuit was religion. I disappointed but not surprised
you by my answer."

"Yes: you grieved me, because, in your case, religion could alone fill the
dreary vacuum of your time. For, with your enlarged and cultivated mind,
you would not view the grandest of earthly questions in a narrow and
sectarian light. You would not think religion consisted in a sanctified
demeanour, in an ostentatious almsgiving, in a harsh judgment of all
without the pale of your opinions. You would behold in it a benign and
harmonious system of morality, which takes from ceremony enough not to
render it tedious but impressive. The school of the Bayles and Voltaires
is annihilated. Men begin now to feel that to philosophise is not to
sneer. In Doubt, we are stopped short at every outlet beyond the Sensual.
In Belief lies the secret of all our valuable exertion. Two sentiments
are enough to preserve even the idlest temper from stagnation--a desire