f to give out a groan of sick derision: 'Ah!'

'And it was no joke holding him tight,' said Mr. Romfrey, 'I 'd as lief
snap an ash. The fellow (he leaned round to Colonel Halkett) must be a
fellow of a fine constitution. And he took his punishment like a man.
I've known worse: and far worse: gentlemen by birth. There's the choice
of taking it upright or fighting like a rabbit with a weasel in his hole.
Leave him to think it over, he'll come right. I think no harm of him,
I've no animus. A man must have his lesson at some time of life. I did
what I had to do.'

'Look here, Nevil,' Stukely Culbrett checked Beauchamp in season: 'I beg
to inquire what Dr. Shrapnel means by "the people." We have in our
country the nobles and the squires, and after them, as I understand it,
the people: that's to say, the middle-class and the working-class--fat
and lean. I'm quite with Shrapnel when he lashes the fleshpots. They want
it, and they don't get it from "their organ," the Press. I fancy you and
I agree about their organ; the dismallest organ that ever ground a
hackneyed set of songs and hymns to madden the thoroughfares.'

'The Press of our country!' interjected Colonel Halkett in moaning
parenthesis.

'It's the week-day Parson of the middle-class, colonel. They have their
thinking done for them as the Chinese have their dancing. But, Nevil,
your Dr. Shrapnel seems to treat the traders as identical with the
aristocracy in opposition to his "people." The traders are the cursed
middlemen, bad friends of the "people," and infernally treacherous to the
nobles till money hoists them. It's they who pull down the country. They
hold up the nobles to the hatred of the democracy, and the democracy to
scare the nobles. One's when they want to swallow a privilege, and the
other's when they want to ring-fence their gains. How is it Shrapnel
doesn't expose the trick? He must see through it. I like that letter of
his. People is one of your Radical big words that burst at a query. He
can't mean Quince, and Bottom, and Starveling, Christopher Sly, Jack
Cade, Caliban, and poor old Hodge? No, no, Nevil. Our clowns are the
stupidest in Europe. They can't cook their meals. They can't spell; they
can scarcely speak. They haven't a jig in their legs. And I believe
they're losing their grin! They're nasty when their blood's up.
Shakespeare's Cade tells you what he thought of Radicalizing the people.
"And as for your mother, I 'll make her a duke"; that