rried out by very good people in
the present day? Do Quakers, when smitten on the right cheek, turn the
left to the smiter? When asked for their coat, do they say, "Friend,
take my shirt also"? Has the Dean of Salisbury no purse? Does the
Archbishop of Canterbury go to an inn, run up a reckoning, and then say
to his landlady, "Mistress, I have no coin"? Assuredly the Dean has a
purse, and a tolerably well-filled one; and, assuredly, the Archbishop,
on departing from an inn, not only settles his reckoning, but leaves
something handsome for the servants, and does not say that he is
forbidden by the gospel to pay for what he has eaten, or the trouble he
has given, as a certain Spanish cavalier said he was forbidden by the
statutes of chivalry. Now, to take the part of yourself, or the part of
the oppressed, with your fists, is quite as lawful in the present day as
it is to refuse your coat and your shirt also to any vagabond who may ask
for them, and not to refuse to pay for supper, bed, and breakfast, at the
Feathers, or any other inn, after you have had the benefit of all three.

The conduct of Lavengro with respect to drink may, upon the whole, serve
as a model. He is no drunkard, nor is he fond of intoxicating other
people; yet when the horrors are upon him he has no objection to go to a
public-house and call for a pint of ale, nor does he shrink from
recommending ale to others when they are faint and downcast. In one
instance, it is true, he does what cannot be exactly justified; he
encourages the Priest in the dingle, in more instances than one, in
drinking more hollands and water than is consistent with decorum. He has
a motive indeed in doing so; a desire to learn from the knave in his cups
the plans and hopes of the Propaganda of Rome. Such conduct, however,
was inconsistent with strict fair dealing and openness; and the author
advises all those whose consciences never reproach them for a single
unfair or covert act committed by them, to abuse him heartily for
administering hollands and water to the Priest of Rome. In that instance
the hero is certainly wrong; yet in all other cases with regard to drink,
he is manifestly right. To tell people that they are never to drink a
glass of ale or wine themselves, or to give one to others, is cant; and
the writer has no toleration for cant of any description. Some cants are
not dangerous; but the writer believes that a more dangerous cant than
the temperance ca