uch as, for example, Sir Charles
Repton's jolly speech at the Van Diemens meeting, in which he outlines
with enormous gusto the principles of procedure of modern finance. (It
will be remembered that an unfortunate accident had deprived Sir Charles
of his power of restraint and afflicted him with Veracititis.)

"Well, there you are then [he says], a shilling, a miserable
shilling. Now just see what that shilling will do!

"In the first place it'll give publicity and plenty of it. Breath
of public life, publicity! Breath o' finance too! We'll have that
railway marked in a dotted line on the maps: all the maps: school
maps: office maps. We'll have leaders on it and speeches on it. And
good hearty attacks on it. And th-e-n ..." He lowered his voice to
a very confidential wheedle--"the price'll begin to creep up--Oh
... o ... oh! the _real_ price, my beloved fellow-shareholders, the
price at which one can really _sell_, the price at which one can
handle the _stuff_."

He gave a great breath of satisfaction. "Now d'ye see? It'll go to
forty shillings right off, it ought to go to forty-five, it may go
to sixty!... And then," he said briskly, suddenly changing his
tone, "then, my hearties, you blasted well sell out: you unload ...
you dump 'em. Plenty more fools where your lot came from.... Most
of you'll lose on your first price: late comers least: a few o'
ye'll make if you bought under two pounds. Anyhow I shall....
There! if that isn't finance, I don't know what is!"

That is great, it is humour of a positively enormous variety, and pure
humour bursting and shining through the careful web of purposeful irony.

Such is the tendency of Mr. Belloc in his most intent occupations, to be
suddenly overcome with a rush of something broad, human and jolly, in a
word, poetic. In these moments he abandons his theories and his
propaganda and sails off before the inspiration. By such passages, as
much as or more than by their constant flow of skilful jeering, these
books will last.

CHAPTER XIII

THE TRAVELLER

In a verse which criticism, baffled but revengeful, will not easily let
die, it has been stated that "Mr. Hilaire Belloc Is a case for
legislation _ad hoc_. He seems to think nobody minds His books being all
of different kinds." They certainly do mind. They ask what an author
_is_. Mr. Bennett is a novelist, and so, one