imate one. If Cecilia! He left the exclamation a blank, but not an
empty dash in the brain; rather like the shroud of night on a vast and
gloriously imagined land.

Nay, the prospect was partly visible, as the unknown country becomes by
degrees to the traveller's optics on the dark hill-tops. It is much, of
course, to be domestically well-mated: but to be fortified and armed
by one's wife with a weapon to fight the world, is rare good fortune; a
rapturous and an infinite satisfaction. He could now support of his own
resources a weekly paper. A paper published weekly, however, is a poor
thing, out of the tide, behind the date, mainly a literary periodical,
no foremost combatant in politics, no champion in the arena; hardly
better than a commentator on the events of the six past days; an echo,
not a voice. It sits on a Saturday bench and pretends to sum up. Who
listens? The verdict knocks dust out of a cushion. It has no steady
continuous pressure of influence. It is the organ of sleepers. Of all
the bigger instruments of money, it is the feeblest, Beauchamp thought.
His constant faith in the good effects of utterance naturally inclined
him to value six occasions per week above one; and in the fight he was
for waging, it was necessary that he should enter the ring and hit blow
for blow sans intermission. A statement that he could call false must
be challenged hot the next morning. The covert Toryism, the fits of
flunkeyism, the cowardice, of the relapsing middle-class, which is now
England before mankind, because it fills the sails of the Press, must be
exposed. It supports the Press in its own interests, affecting to speak
for the people. It belies the people. And this Press, declaring itself
independent, can hardly walk for fear of treading on an interest here,
an interest there. It cannot have a conscience. It is a bad guide,
a false guardian; its abject claim to be our national and popular
interpreter-even that is hollow and a mockery! It is powerful only
while subservient. An engine of money, appealing to the sensitiveness of
money, it has no connection with the mind of the nation. And that it is
not of, but apart from, the people, may be seen when great crises come.
Can it stop a war? The people would, and with thunder, had they the
medium. But in strong gales the power of the Press collapses; it wheezes
like a pricked pigskin of a piper. At its best Beauchamp regarded our
lordly Press as a curiously diapered curtain