u start, in fear of Toryism, on an errand of Radicalism, and in fear of
Radicalism to Toryism you draw back. There is your pendulum-swing!'

Lectures to this effect were delivered by Dr. Shrapnel throughout the
day, for his private spiritual solace it may be supposed, unto Lydiard,
Turbot, Beauchamp, or whomsoever the man chancing to be near him, and
never did Sir Oracle wear so extraordinary a garb. The favourite missiles
of the day were flour-bags. Dr. Shrapnel's uncommon height, and his
outrageous long brown coat, would have been sufficient to attract them,
without the reputation he had for desiring to subvert everything old
English. The first discharges gave him the appearance of a thawing
snowman. Drenchings of water turned the flour to ribs of paste, and in
colour at least he looked legitimately the cook's own spitted hare,
escaped from her basting ladle, elongated on two legs. It ensued that
whenever he was caught sight of, as he walked unconcernedly about, the
young street-professors of the decorative arts were seized with a frenzy
to add their share to the whitening of him, until he might have been
taken for a miller that had gone bodily through his meal. The popular cry
proclaimed him a ghost, and he walked like one, impassive, blanched, and
silent amid the uproar of mobs of jolly ruffians, for each of whom it was
a point of honour to have a shy at old Shrapnel.

Clad in this preparation of pie-crust, he called from time to time at
Beauchamp's hotel, and renewed his monologue upon that Radical empire in
the future which was for ever in the future for the pioneers of men, yet
not the less their empire. 'Do we live in our bodies?' quoth he, replying
to his fiery interrogation: 'Ay, the Tories! the Liberals!' They lived in
their bodies. Not one syllable of personal consolation did he vouchsafe
to Beauchamp. He did not imagine it could be required by a man who had
bathed in the pure springs of Radicalism; and it should be remarked that
Beauchamp deceived him by imitating his air of happy abstraction, or
subordination of the faculties to a distant view, comparable to a ship's
crew in difficulties receiving the report of the man at the masthead.
Beauchamp deceived Miss Denham too, and himself, by saying, as if he
cherished the philosophy of defeat, besides the resolution to fight on:

'It's only a skirmish lost, and that counts for nothing in a battle
without end: it must be incessant.'

'But does incessant battli