oth my uncle. "Sir, that might be true or not; but it was not on the
field of battle that his followers were to reason on the character
of the master who trusted them, especially when a legion of foreign
hirelings stood opposed to them. I would not have descended from that
turncoat Stanley to be lord of all the lands the earls of Derby can
boast of. Sir, in loyalty, men fight and die for a grand principle and
a lofty passion; and this brave Sir William was paying back to the last
Plantagenet the benefits he had received from the first!"

"And yet it may be doubted," said I, maliciously, "whether William
Caxton the printer did not--"

"Plague, pestilence, and fire seize William Caxton the printer, and his
invention too!" cried my uncle, barbarously.

"When there were only a few books, at least they were good ones; and now
they are so plentiful, all they do is to confound the judgment,
unsettle the reason, drive the good books out of cultivation, and draw a
ploughshare of innovation over every ancient landmark; seduce the women,
womanize the men, upset states, thrones, and churches; rear a race of
chattering, conceited coxcombs who can always find books in plenty to
excuse them from doing their duty; make the poor discontented, the rich
crotchety and whimsical, refine away the stout old virtues into quibbles
and sentiments! All imagination formerly was expended in noble action,
adventure, enterprise, high deeds, and aspirations; now a man can but
be imaginative by feeding on the false excitement of passions he never
felt, dangers he never shared, and he fritters away all there is of life
to spare in him upon the fictitious love--sorrows of Bond Street and St.
James's. Sir, chivalry ceased when the Press rose! And to fasten upon
me, as a forefather, out of all men who ever lived and sinned, the very
man who has most destroyed what I most valued,--who, by the Lord! with
his cursed invention has well-nigh got rid of respect for forefathers
altogether,--is a cruelty of which my brother had never been capable if
that printer's devil had not got hold of him!"

That a man in this blessed nineteenth century should be such a Vandal,
and that my Uncle Roland should talk in a strain that Totila would have
been ashamed of, within so short a time after my father's scientific
and erudite oration on the Hygeiana of Books,--was enough to make one
despair of the progress of intellect and the perfectibility of our
species. And I have no