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are your roundabout euphuisms that dress up swindling till it looks as well as honesty, and shoot with boiled peas instead of bullets. I hate your gentlemanly speakers.

There are some people one must wish to judge one truly. Not to wish it would be mere hardness.

A bachelor's children are always young: they're immortal children-always lisping, waddling, helpless, and with a chance of turning out good.

Those old stories of visions and dreams guiding men have their truth: we are saved by making the future present to ourselves.

A fine lady is a squirrel-headed thing, with small airs, and small notions, about as applicable to the business of life as a pair of tweezers to the clearing of a forest.

I'll never marry, though I should have to live on raw turnips to subdue my flesh. I'll never look back and say, 'I had a fine purpose once-I meant to keep my hands clean, and my soul upright, and to look truth in the face; but pray excuse me, I have a wife and children-I must lie and simper a little, else they'll starve;' or My wife is nice, she must have her bread well buttered, and her feelings will be hurt if she is not thought genteel.' That is the lot Miss Esther is pre

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paring for some man or other. I could grind my teeth at such self-satisfied minxes, who think they can tell everybody what is the correct thing, and the utmost stretch of their ideas will not place them on a level with the intelligent fleas. I should like to see if she could be made ashamed of herself.

I can't bear to see you going the way of the foolish women who spoil men's lives. Men can't help loving them, and so they make themselves slaves to the petty desires of petty creatures. That's the way those who might do better spend their lives for nought-get checked in every great effort―toil with brain and limb for things that have no more to do with a manly life than tarts and confectionery. That's what makes women a curse; all life is stunted to suit their littleThat's why I'll never love, if I can help it;

ness.

and if I love, I'll bear it, and never marry.

Felix. You said you didn't mind about people having right opinions so that they had good taste. Now I want you to see what shallow stuff that is.

Esther. Oh, I don't doubt it if you say so. I know you are a person of right opinions.

Felix. But by opinions you mean men's thoughts about great subjects, and by taste you mean their thoughts about small ones: dress, behaviour, amusements, ornaments.

Esther. Well-yes-or rather, their sensibilities about those things.

Felix. It comes to the same thing; thoughts, opinions, knowledge, are only a sensibility to facts and

ideas. If I understand a geometrical problem, it is because I have a sensibility to the way in which lines and figures are related to each other; and I want you to see that the creature who has the sensibilities that you call taste, and not the sensibilities that you call opinions, is simply a lower, pettier sort of being-an insect that notices the shaking of the table, but never notices the thunder.

Esther. Very well, I am an insect; yet I notice that you are thundering at me.

Felix.-No, you are not an insect. That is what exasperates me at your making a boast of littleness. You have enough understanding to make it wicked that you should add one more to the women who hinder men's lives from having any nobleness in them.

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I wonder whether the subtle measuring of forces will ever come to measuring the force there would be in one beautiful woman whose mind was as noble as her face was beautiful-who made a man's passion for her rush in one current with all the great aims of his life.

Felix. I don't measure my force by the negations in me, and think my soul must be a mighty one because it is more given to idle suffering than to beneficent activity. That's what your favourite gentlemen do, of the Byronic-bilious style.

Esther. I don't admit that those are my favourite gentlemen.

Felix.-I've heard you defend them-gentlemen like your Rénés, who have no particular talent for the finite,

but a general sense that the infinite is the right thing for them. They might as well boast of nausea as a proof of a strong inside.

...

I reverence the law, but not where it is a pretext for wrong, which it should be the very object of law to hinder. . . . I hold it blasphemy to say that a man ought not to fight against authority: there is no great religion and no great freedom that has not done it, in the beginning.

Rufus Lyon.-You will not deny that you glory in the name of Radical, or Root-and-branch man, as they said in the great times when Nonconformity was in its giant youth.

Felix.-A Radical-yes; but I want to go to some roots a good deal lower down than the franchise.

Rufus Lyon.-Truly there is a work within which cannot be dispensed with: but it is our preliminary work to free men from the stifled life of political nullity, and bring them into what Milton calls 'the liberal air,' wherein alone can be wrought the final triumphs of the Spirit.

Felix. With all my heart. But while Caliban is Caliban, though you multiply him by a million he'll worship every Trinculo that carries a bottle.

This woman has sat under the Gospel all her life, and she is as blind as a heathen, and as proud and stiff-necked as a Pharisee; yet she is one of the souls I watch for. 'Tis true that even Sara, the chosen mother of God's people, showed a spirit of unbelief,

and perhaps of selfish anger; and it is a passage that bears the unmistakeable signet, 'doing honour to the wife or woman, as unto the weaker vessel.' For therein is the greatest check put on the ready scorn of the natural man.

I have had much puerile blame cast upon me because I have uttered such names as Brougham and Wellington in the pulpit. Why not Wellington as well as Rabshakeh ? and why not Brougham as well as Balaam? Does God know less of men than He did in the days of Hezekiah and Moses ?-is his arm shortened, and is the world become too wide for his providence ?

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'And all the people said, Amen.' . . . My brethren, do you think that great shout was raised in Israel by each man's waiting to say 'amen till his neighbours had said amen? Do you think there will ever be a great shout for the right-the shout of a nation as of one man, rounded and whole, like the voice of the archangel that bound together all the listeners of earth and heaven-if every Christian of you peeps round to see what his neighbours in good coats are doing, or else puts his hat before his face that he may shout and never be heard? But this is what you do : when the servant of God stands up to deliver his message, do you lay your souls beneath the Word as you set out your plants beneath the falling rain? No; one of you sends his eyes to all corners, he smothers his soul with small questions, 'What does brother Y. think?' 'Is this doctrinę high enough for brother Z.?' 'Will the church members be pleased?'

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