s extensive
library.

Travers, never much of a reader, was by no means a despiser of learning,
and he soon took to historical and archaeological researches with the
ardour of a man who must always throw energy into any pursuit that
occasion presents as an escape from indolence. Indolent Leopold Travers
never could be. But, more than either of these resources of occupation,
the companionship of Chillingly Gordon excited his interest and
quickened the current of his thoughts. Always fond of renewing his own
youth in the society of the young, and of the sympathizing temperament
which belongs to cordial natures, he had, as we have seen, entered very
heartily into the ambition of George Belvoir, and reconciled himself
very pliably to the humours of Kenelm Chillingly. But the first of these
two was a little too commonplace, the second a little too eccentric, to
enlist the complete good-fellowship which, being alike very clever and
very practical, Leopold Travers established with that very clever and
very practical representative of the rising generation, Chillingly
Gordon. Between them there was this meeting-ground, political and
worldly, a great contempt for innocuous old-fashioned notions; added to
which, in the mind of Leopold Travers, was a contempt--which would
have been complete, but that the contempt admitted dread--of harmful
new-fashioned notions which, interpreted by his thoughts, threatened
ruin to his country and downfall to the follies of existent society,
and which, interpreted by his language, tamed itself into the man of the
world's phrase, "Going too far for me." Notions which, by the much
more cultivated intellect and the immeasurably more soaring ambition of
Chillingly Gordon, might be viewed and criticised thus: "Could I accept
these doctrines? I don't see my way to being Prime Minister of a country
in which religion and capital are still powers to be consulted. And,
putting aside religion and capital, I don't see how, if these doctrines
passed into law, with a good coat on my back I should not be a sufferer.
Either I, as having a good coat, should have it torn off my back as a
capitalist, or, if I remonstrated in the name of moral honesty, be put
to death as a religionist."

Therefore when Leopold Travers said, "Of course we must go on,"
Chillingly Gordon smiled and answered, "Certainly, go on." And when
Leopold Travers added, "But we may go too far," Chillingly Gordon shook
his dead, and replied, "How