we have high warranty for such double
speaking. Did not the foundation stone of our Church, Saint Peter, deny
in the public-house what he had previously professed in the valley?"

"And do you think," said I, "that the people of England, who have shown
aversion to anything in the shape of intolerance, will permit such
barbarities as you have described?"

"Let them become Papists," said the man in black: "only let the majority
become Papists, and you will see."

"They will never become so," said I; "the good sense of the people of
England will never permit them to commit such an absurdity."

"The good sense of the people of England!" said the man in black, filling
himself another glass.

"Yes," said I; "the good sense of not only the upper, but the middle and
lower classes."

"And of what description of people are the upper class?" said the man in
black, putting a lump of sugar into his gin and water.

"Very fine people," said I, "monstrously fine people; so, at least, they
are generally believed to be."

"He! he!" said the man in black; "only those think them so who don't know
them. The male part of the upper class are in youth a set of heartless
profligates; in old age, a parcel of poor, shaking, nervous paillards.
The female part, worthy to be the sisters and wives of such wretches,
unmarried, full of cold vice, kept under by vanity and ambition, but
which, after marriage, they seek not to restrain; in old age, abandoned
to vapours and horrors; do you think that such beings will afford any
obstacle to the progress of the Church in these regions, as soon as her
movements are unfettered?"

"I cannot give an opinion; I know nothing of them, except from a
distance. But what think you of the middle classes?"

"Their chief characteristic," said the man in black, "is a rage for
grandeur and gentility; and that same rage makes us quite sure of them in
the long run. Everything that's lofty meets their unqualified
approbation; whilst everything humble, or, as they call it, 'low,' is
scouted by them. They begin to have a vague idea that the religion which
they have hitherto professed is low; at any rate that it is not the
religion of the mighty ones of the earth, of the great kings and emperors
whose shoes they have a vast inclination to kiss, nor was used by the
grand personages of whom they have read in their novels and romances,
their Ivanhoes, their Marmions, and their Ladies of the Lake."

"Do you think th