s not only
the virtue of a saint, but bestows the bliss of a god. Before the steps
of your idol, the evils of life disappear. To hear you, one has but 'to
know,' in order to be exempt from the sins and sorrows of the ignorant.
Has it ever been so? Grant that you diffuse among the many all the
knowledge ever attained by the few. Have the wise few been so unerring
and so happy? You supposed that your motto was accurately cited from
Bacon. What was Bacon himself? The poet tells you--

'The wisest, brightest, _meanest_ of mankind.'

Can you hope to bestow upon the vast mass of your order the luminous
intelligence of this 'Lord Chancellor of nature?' Grant that you do
so--and what guarantee have you for the virtue and the happiness which
you assume as the concomitants of the gift? See Bacon himself; what
black ingratitude! what miserable self-seeking! what truckling
servility! what abject and pitiful spirit! So far from intellectual
knowledge, in its highest form and type, insuring virtue and bliss, it
is by no means uncommon to find great mental cultivation combined with
great moral corruption." (Aside to Riccabocca)--"Push on, will you?"

RICCABOCCA.--"A combination remarkable in eras as in individuals.
Petronius shows us a state of morals at which a commonplace devil would
blush, in the midst of a society more intellectually cultivated than
certainly was that which produced Regulus or the Horatii. And the most
learned eras in modern Italy were precisely those which brought the
vices into the most ghastly refinement."

LEONARD (rising in great agitation, and clasping his hands.)--"I can not
contend with you, who produce against information so slender and crude
as mine the stores which have been locked from my reach. But I feel that
there must be another side to this shield--a shield that you will not
even allow to be silver. And oh, if you thus speak of knowledge, why
have you encouraged me to know?"

CHAPTER XX.

"Ah, my son!" said the Parson, "if I wished to prove the value of
Religion, would you think I served it much, if I took as my motto,
'Religion is power?' Would not that be a base and sordid view of its
advantages? And would you not say he who regards religion as a power,
intends to abuse it as a priestcraft?"

"Well put!" said Riccabocca.

"Wait a moment--let me think. Ah--I see, sir!" said Leonard.

PARSON.--"If the cause be holy, do not weigh it in the scales of the
market; if its objects be pe