cal machine is rolling downwards towards
this bottom?" he said, with an interest in the answer that, living in
the quiet and forgetfulness of his own home, he would have laughed at
himself for entertaining. But our sensibilities become quickened by
collision, and opposition is known even to create love.

Mrs. Bloomfield was quick-witted, intelligent, cultivated and shrewd.
She saw the motive at a glance, and, notwithstanding she saw and felt
all its abuses, strongly attached to the governing principle of her
country's social organization, as is almost universally the case with
the strongest minds and most generous hearts of the nation, she was
not disposed to let a stranger carry away a false impression of her
sentiments on such a point.

"Did you ever study logic, Sir George Templemore?" she asked, archly.

"A little, though not enough I fear to influence my mode of
reasoning, or even to leave me familiar with the terms."

"Oh! I am not about to assail you with _sequiturs_ and _non
sequiturs_ dialectics and all the mysteries of _Denk-Lehre,_ but
simply to remind you there is such a thing as the bottom of a
subject. When I tell you we are flying towards the bottom of our
institutions, it is in the intellectual sense, and not, as you have
erroneously imagined, in an unintellectual sense. I mean that we are
getting to understand them, which, I fear, we did not absolutely do
at the commencement of the 'experiment.'"

"But I think you will admit, that as the civilization of the country
advances, some material changes must occur; your people cannot always
remain stationary; they must either go backwards or forward."

"Up or down, if you will allow me to correct your phraseology. The
civilization of the country, in one sense at least, is retrogressive,
and the people, as they cannot go 'up,' betray a disposition to go
'down.'"

"You deal in enigmas, and I am afraid to think I understand you."

"I mean, merely, that gallowses are fast disappearing, and that the
people--_le peuple_ you will understand--begin to accept money. In
both particulars, I think there is a sensible change for the worse,
within my own recollection."

Mrs. Bloomfield then changed her manner, and from using that light-
hearted gaiety with which she often rendered her conversation
_piquante_, and even occasionally brilliant, she became more grave
and explicit. The subject soon turned to that of punishments, and few
men could have reasoned more se