rd, yielding to him on a point
or two of literary judgement, only the more vehemently to maintain his
ideas of discretion, which were, that he would not take shelter behind
a single subterfuge; that he would try this question nakedly, though
he should stand alone; that he would stake his position on it, and
establish his right to speak his opinions: and as for unseasonable
times, he protested it was the cry of a gorged middle-class, frightened
of further action, and making snug with compromise. Would it be a
seasonable time when there was uproar? Then it would be a time to be
silent on such themes: they could be discussed calmly now, and without
danger; and whether he was hunted or not, he cared nothing. He declined
to consider the peculiar nature of Englishmen: they must hear truth or
perish.

Knowing the difficulty once afflicting Beauchamp in the art of speaking
on politics tersely, Lydiard was rather astonished at his well-delivered
cannonade; and he fancied that his modesty had been displaced by the new
acquirement; not knowing the nervous fever of his friend's condition,
for which the rattle of speech was balm, and contention a native
element, and the assumption of truth a necessity. Beauchamp hugged
his politics like some who show their love of the pleasures of life by
taking to them angrily. It was all he had: he had given up all for it.
He forced Lydiard to lay down his pen and walk back to the square with
him, and went on arguing, interjecting, sneering, thumping the old
country, raising and oversetting her, treating her alternately like a
disrespected grandmother, and like a woman anciently beloved; as a
dead lump, and as a garden of seeds; reviewing prominent political men,
laughing at the dwarf-giants; finally casting anchor on a Mechanics'
Institute that he had recently heard of, where working men met weekly
for the purpose of reading the British poets.

'That's the best thing I've heard of late,' he said, shaking Lydiard's
hand on the door-steps.

'Ah! You're Commander Beauchamp; I think I know you. I've seen you on a
platform,' cried a fresh-faced man in decent clothes, halting on his
way along the pavement; 'and if you were in your uniform, you damned
Republican dog! I'd strip you with my own hands, for the disloyal
scoundrel you are, with your pimping Republicanism and capsizing
everything in a country like Old England. It's the cat-o'-nine-tails you
want, and the bosen to lay on; and I'd do it myse