ny's to
perceive that you would have to pass a river of blood before you had the
slightest chance of setting foot on the flowery banks on which they
invited you to repose--tracts which rouged poor Christianity on the
cheeks, clapped a crown of innocent daffodillies on her head, and set
her to dancing a _pas de zephyr_ in the pastoral ballet in which St.
Simon pipes to the flock he shears; or having first laid it down as a
preliminary axiom, that

"The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself--
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,"

substituted in place thereof Monsieur Fourier's symmetrical phalanstere,
or Mr. Owen's architectural parallelogram. It was with some such tract
that Lenny was seasoning his crusts and his radishes, when Riccabocca,
bending his long dark face over the student's shoulder, said abruptly--

"_Diavolo_, my friend! What on earth have you got there? Just let me
look at it, will you?"

Leonard rose respectfully, and colored deeply as he surrendered the
tract to Riccabocca.

The wise man read the first page attentively, the second more cursorily,
and only ran his eye over the rest. He had gone through too vast a range
of problems political, not to have passed over that venerable _Pons
Asinorum_ of Socialism, on which Fouriers and St. Simons sit straddling
and cry aloud that they have arrived at the last boundary of knowledge!

"All this is as old as the hills," quoth Riccabocca irreverently; "but
the hills stand still, and this--there it goes!" and the sage pointed to
a cloud emitted from his pipe. "Did you ever read Sir David Brewster on
Optical Delusions? No! Well, I'll lend it to you. You will find therein
a story of a lady who always saw a black cat on her hearth-rug. The
black cat existed only in her fancy, but the hallucination was natural
and reasonable--eh--what do you think?"

"Why, sir," said Leonard, not catching the Italian's meaning, "I don't
exactly see that it was natural and reasonable."

"Foolish boy, yes! because black cats are things possible and known. But
who ever saw upon earth a community of men such as sit on the
hearth-rugs of Messrs. Owen and Fourier? If the lady's hallucination was
not reasonable, what is his, who believes in such visions as these?"

Leonard bit his lip.

"My dear boy," cried Riccabocca kindly, "the only thing sure and
tangible to which these writers would lead you, lies at the first st