lennium, which I have perhaps rashly named, is
so distant that we need not even think of it as possible. Men's
intellects are at present so various that we cannot even realise the
idea of equality, and here in England we have been taught to hate the
word by the evil effects of those absurd attempts which have been
made elsewhere to proclaim it as a fact accomplished by the scratch
of a pen or by a chisel on a stone. We have been injured in that,
because a good word signifying a grand idea has been driven out of
the vocabulary of good men. Equality would be a heaven, if we could
attain it. How can we to whom so much has been given dare to think
otherwise? How can you look at the bowed back and bent legs and
abject face of that poor ploughman, who winter and summer has to drag
his rheumatic limbs to his work, while you go a-hunting or sit in
pride of place among the foremost few of your country, and say that
it all is as it ought to be? You are a Liberal because you know that
it is not all as it ought to be, and because you would still march on
to some nearer approach to equality; though the thing itself is so
great, so glorious, so godlike,--nay, so absolutely divine,--that you
have been disgusted by the very promise of it, because its perfection
is unattainable. Men have asserted a mock equality till the very idea
of equality stinks in men's nostrils."

The Duke in his enthusiasm had thrown off his hat, and was sitting
on a wooden seat which they had reached, looking up among the clouds.
His left hand was clenched, and from time to time with his right
he rubbed the thin hairs on his brow. He had begun in a low voice,
with a somewhat slipshod enunciation of his words, but had gradually
become clear, resonant, and even eloquent. Phineas knew that there
were stories told of certain bursts of words which had come from
him in former days in the House of Commons. These had occasionally
surprised men and induced them to declare that Planty Pall,--as he
was then often called,--was a dark horse. But they had been few and
far between, and Phineas had never heard them. Now he gazed at his
companion in silence, wondering whether the speaker would go on with
his speech. But the face changed on a sudden, and the Duke with an
awkward motion snatched up his hat. "I hope you ain't cold," he said.

"Not at all," said Phineas.

"I came here because of that bend of the river. I am always very
fond of that bend. We don't go over the rive