persecutes?'

'I have already given you an answer,' said the man in black. 'With
respect to the matter of the public-house, it is one of the happy
privileges of those who belong to my Church to deny in the public-house
what they admit in the dingle; we have high warranty for such double
speaking. Did not the foundation stone of our Church, Saint Peter, deny
in the public-house what he had previously professed in the valley?'

'And do you think,' said I, 'that the people of England, who have shown
aversion to anything in the shape of intolerance, will permit such
barbarities as you have described?'

'Let them become Papists,' said the man in black; 'only let the majority
become Papists, and you will see.'

'They will never become so,' said I; 'the good sense of the people of
England will never permit them to commit such an absurdity.'

'The good sense of the people of England!' said the man in black, filling
himself another glass.

'Yes,' said I, 'the good sense of not only the upper, but the middle and
lower classes.'

'And of what description of people are the upper class?' said the man in
black, putting a lump of sugar into his gin and water.

'Very fine people,' said I, 'monstrously fine people; so, at least, they
are generally believed to be.'

'He! he!' said the man in black; 'only those think them so who don't know
them. The male part of the upper class are in youth a set of heartless
profligates; in old age, a parcel of poor, shaking, nervous paillards.
The female part, worthy to be the sisters and wives of such
wretches--unmarried, full of cold vice, kept under by vanity and
ambition, but which, after marriage, they seek not to restrain; in old
age, abandoned to vapours and horrors; do you think that such beings will
afford any obstacle to the progress of the Church in these regions, as
soon as her movements are unfettered?'

'I cannot give an opinion; I know nothing of them, except from a
distance. But what think you of the middle classes?'

'Their chief characteristic,' said the man in black, 'is a rage for
grandeur and gentility; and that same rage makes us quite sure of them in
the long run. Everything that's lofty meets their unqualified
approbation; whilst everything humble, or, as they call it, "low," is
scouted by them. They begin to have a vague idea that the religion which
they have hitherto professed is low; at any rate, that it is not the
religion of the mighty ones of the earth,