the man in black, "I honour you for what you said
about the Church of England. Every one who speaks against the Church of
England has my warm heart. Down with it, I say, and may the stones of it
be used for mending the roads, as my friend William says in his
_Register_."

The man in black, with a courteous nod of his head, drank to the man in
the snuff-coloured coat. "With respect to the steeples," said he, "I am
not altogether of your opinion; they might be turned to better account
than to serve to mend the roads; they might still be used as places of
worship, but not for the worship of the Church of England. I have no
fault to find with the steeples, it is the church itself which I am
compelled to arraign; but it will not stand long, the respectable part of
its ministers are already leaving it. It is a bad church, a persecuting
church."

"Whom does it persecute?" said I.

The man in black glanced at me slightly, and then replied slowly, "the
Catholics".

"And do those whom you call Catholics never persecute?" said I.

"Never," said the man in black.

"Did you ever read Fox's _Book of Martyrs_?" said I.

"He! he!" tittered the man in black, "there is not a word of truth in
Fox's _Book of Martyrs_."

"Ten times more than in the _Flos Sanctorum_," said I.

The man in black looked at me, but made no answer.

"And what say you to the Massacre of the Albigenses and the Vaudois,
'whose bones lie scattered on the cold Alp,' or the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes?"

The man in black made no answer.

"Go to," said I, "it is because the Church of England is not a
persecuting church, that those whom you call the respectable part are
leaving her; it is because they can't do with the poor Dissenters what
Simon de Montfort did with the Albigenses, and the cruel Piedmontese with
the Vaudois, that they turn to bloody Rome; the Pope will no doubt
welcome them, for the Pope, do you see, being very much in want, will
welcome--"

"Hollo!" said the radical, interfering, "What are you saying about the
Pope? I say hurrah for the Pope! I value no religion three halfpence,
as I said before, but if I were to adopt any, it should be the Popish, as
it's called, because I conceives the Popish to be the grand enemy of the
Church of England, of the beggarly aristocracy, and the borough-monger
system, so I won't hear the Pope abused while I am by. Come, don't look
fierce. You won't fight, you know, I have proved it; but I