he subject before they started
together for the scene of the accident and Romfrey Castle. No notice was
taken of Beauchamp's remark, that he consented to go though his duty lay
elsewhere. Beauchamp had not the faculty of reading inside men, or he
would have apprehended that his uncle was engaged in silently heaping
aggravations to shoot forth one fine day a thundering and astonishing
counterstroke.

He should have known his uncle Everard better.

In this respect he seemed to have no memory. But who has much that has
given up his brains for a lodging to a single idea? It is at once a
devouring dragon, and an intractable steamforce; it is a tyrant that
has eaten up a senate, and a prophet with a message. Inspired of
solitariness and gigantic size, it claims divine origin. The world can
have no peace for it.

Cecilia had not pleased him; none had. He did not bear in mind that the
sight of Dr. Shrapnel sick and weak, which constantly reanimated his
feelings of pity and of wrath, was not given to the others of whom he
demanded a corresponding energy of just indignation and sympathy. The
sense that he was left unaided to the task of bending his tough uncle,
combined with his appreciation of the righteousness of the task to
embitter him and set him on a pedestal, from which he descended at every
sign of an opportunity for striking, and to which he retired continually
baffled and wrathful, in isolation.

Then ensued the dreadful division in his conception of his powers:
for he who alone saw the just and right thing to do, was incapable of
compelling it to be done. Lay on to his uncle as he would, that wrestler
shook him off. And here was one man whom he could not move! How move a
nation?

There came on him a thirst for the haranguing of crowds. They agree with
you or they disagree; exciting you to activity in either case. They do
not interpose cold Tory exclusiveness and inaccessibility. You have
them in the rough; you have nature in them, and all that is hopeful in
nature. You drive at, over, and through them, for their good; you plough
them. You sow them too. Some of them perceive that it is for their good,
and what if they be a minority? Ghastly as a minority is in an Election,
in a lifelong struggle it is refreshing and encouraging. The young world
and its triumph is with the minority. Oh to be speaking! Condemned to
silence beside his uncle, Beauchamp chafed for a loosed tongue and an
audience tossing like the well-w