in their fervours might be near it to grasp it, if they could
be moved to moral distinctness, mental intention, with a preference of
strong plain speech over the crack of their whips. Colney could not or
would not praise our modern adventurous, experimental, heroic, tramping
active, as opposed to yonder pursy passives and negatives; he had
occasions for flicking the fellow sharply: and to speak of the Lord as
our friend present with us, palpable to Reason, perceptible to natural
piety solely through the reason, which justifies punishment; that would
have stopped his mouth upon the theme of God-forsaken creatures. Our
satirist is an executioner by profession, a moralist in excuse, or at the
tail of it; though he thinks the position reversed, when he moralizes
angrily to have his angry use of the scourge condoned. Nevertheless, he
fills a serviceable place; and certainly he is not happy in his business.
Colney suffered as heavily as he struck. If he had been no more than a
mime in the motley of satire, he would have sucked compensation from the
acid of his phrases, for the failure to prick and goad, and work
amendment.

He dramatized to Nataly some of the scene going on at the Wells: Victor's
petition; his fugue in urgency of it; the brief reply of Miss Dorothea
and her muted echo Miss Virginia. He was rather their apologist for
refusing. But, as when, after himself listening to their 'views,' he had
deferentially withdrawn from the ladies of Moorsedge, and had then beheld
their strangely-hatted lieutenants and the regiments of the toneless
respectable on the pantiles and the mounts, the curse upon the satirist
impelled him to generalize. The quiet good ladies were multiplied: they
were 'the thousands of their sisters, petticoated or long-coated or
buck-skinned; comfortable annuitants under clerical shepherding, close
upon outnumbering the labourers they paralyze at home and stultify
abroad.' Colney thumped away. The country's annuitants had for type 'the
figure with the helmet of the Owl-Goddess and the trident of the
Earth-shaker, seated on a wheel, at the back of penny-pieces; in whom you
see neither the beauty of nakedness nor the charm of drapery; not the
helmet's dignity or the trident's power; but she has patently that which
stops the wheel; and poseing for representative of an imperial nation,
she helps to pass a penny.' So he passed his epigram, heedless of the
understanding or attention of his hearer; who tempor