then; the conclusion to be drawn as to
your character depends upon the nature of the motives which guide
your conduct; if you are patient because you expect to make something
eventually out of Crimsworth, notwithstanding his tyranny, or perhaps by
means of it, you are what the world calls an interested and mercenary,
but may be a very wise fellow; if you are patient because you think it a
duty to meet insult with submission, you are an essential sap, and in
no shape the man for my money; if you are patient because your nature is
phlegmatic, flat, inexcitable, and that you cannot get up to the pitch
of resistance, why, God made you to be crushed; and lie down by all
means, and lie flat, and let Juggernaut ride well over you."

Mr. Hunsden's eloquence was not, it will be perceived, of the smooth and
oily order. As he spoke, he pleased me ill. I seem to recognize in him
one of those characters who, sensitive enough themselves, are selfishly
relentless towards the sensitiveness of others. Moreover, though he
was neither like Crimsworth nor Lord Tynedale, yet he was acrid, and, I
suspected, overbearing in his way: there was a tone of despotism in
the urgency of the very reproaches by which, he aimed at goading the
oppressed into rebellion against the oppressor. Looking at him still
more fixedly than I had yet done, I saw written in his eye and mien a
resolution to arrogate to himself a freedom so unlimited that it might
often trench on the just liberty of his neighbours. I rapidly ran over
these thoughts, and then I laughed a low and involuntary laugh, moved
thereto by a slight inward revelation of the inconsistency of man.
It was as I thought: Hunsden had expected me to take with calm his
incorrect and offensive surmises, his bitter and haughty taunts; and
himself was chafed by a laugh, scarce louder than a whisper.

His brow darkened, his thin nostril dilated a little.

"Yes," he began, "I told you that you were an aristocrat, and who but
an aristocrat would laugh such a laugh as that, and look such a look?
A laugh frigidly jeering; a look lazily mutinous; gentlemanlike irony,
patrician resentment. What a nobleman you would have made, William
Crimsworth! You are cut out for one; pity Fortune has baulked Nature!
Look at the features, figure, even to the hands--distinction all
over--ugly distinction! Now, if you'd only an estate and a mansion,
and a park, and a title, how you could play the exclusive, maintain the
rights