as the question for Nevil Beauchamp.
The democratic spirit inhabiting him, temporarily or permanently, asked
whether they were not increasing to numbers which were oppressive? And
further, whether it was good, for the country, the race, ay, the species,
that they should be so distinctly removed from the thousands who fought
the grand, and the grisly, old battle with nature for bread of life.
Those grimy sails of the colliers and fishing-smacks, set them in a great
sea, would have beauty for eyes and soul beyond that of elegance and
refinement. And do but look on them thoughtfully, the poor are
everlastingly, unrelievedly, in the abysses of the great sea . . . .

One cannot pursue to conclusions a line of meditation that is half-built
on the sensations as well as on the mind. Did Beauchamp at all desire to
have those idly lovely adornments of riches, the Yacht and the Lady,
swept away? Oh, dear, no. He admired them, he was at home with them. They
were much to his taste. Standing on a point of the beach for a last look
at them before he set his face to the town, he prolonged the look in a
manner to indicate that the place where business called him was not in
comparison at all so pleasing: and just as little enjoyable were his
meditations opposed to predilections. Beauty plucked the heart from his
breast. But he had taken up arms; he had drunk of the questioning cup,
that which denieth peace to us, and which projects us upon the missionary
search of the How, the Wherefore, and the Why not, ever afterward. He
questioned his justification, and yours, for gratifying tastes in an
ill-regulated world of wrong-doing, suffering, sin, and bounties
unrighteously dispensed--not sufficiently dispersed. He said by-and-by to
pleasure, battle to-day. From his point of observation, and with the
store of ideas and images his fiery yet reflective youth had gathered, he
presented himself as it were saddled to that hard-riding force known as
the logical impetus, which spying its quarry over precipices, across
oceans and deserts, and through systems and webs, and into shops and
cabinets of costliest china, will come at it, will not be refused, let
the distances and the breakages be what they may. He went like the
meteoric man with the mechanical legs in the song, too quick for a cry of
protestation, and reached results amazing to his instincts, his tastes,
and his training, not less rapidly and naturally than tremendous Ergo is
shot forth from