aws of
nature? And therefore when your party compare sneeringly Romish
Sanctity, and English Civilisation, I say, "Take you the Sanctity,
and give me the Civilisation!" The one may be a dream, for it is
unnatural; the other cannot be, for it is natural; and not an evil
in it at which you sneer but is discovered, day by day, to be owing
to some infringement of the laws of nature. When we "draw bills on
nature," as Carlyle says, "she honours them,"--our ships do sail;
our mills do work; our doctors do cure; our soldiers do fight. And
she does not honour yours; for your Jesuits have, by their own
confession, to lie, to swindle, to get even man to accept theirs for
them. So give me the political economist, the sanitary reformer,
the engineer; and take your saints and virgins, relics and miracles.
The spinning-jenny and the railroad, Cunard's liners and the
electric telegraph, are to me, if not to you, signs that we are, on
some points at least, in harmony with the universe; that there is a
mighty spirit working among us, who cannot be your anarchic and
destroying Devil, and therefore may be the Ordering and Creating
God.'

Which of them do you think, reader, had most right on his side?

CHAPTER VI: VOGUE LA GALERE

Lancelot was now so far improved in health as to return to his
little cottage ornee. He gave himself up freely to his new passion.
With his comfortable fortune and good connections, the future seemed
bright and possible enough as to circumstances. He knew that
Argemone felt for him; how much it seemed presumptuous even to
speculate, and as yet no golden-visaged meteor had arisen portentous
in his amatory zodiac. No rich man had stepped in to snatch, in
spite of all his own flocks and herds, at the poor man's own ewe-
lamb, and set him barking at all the world, as many a poor lover has
to do in defence of his morsel of enjoyment, now turned into a mere
bone of contention and loadstone for all hungry kites and crows.

All that had to be done was to render himself worthy of her, and in
doing so, to win her. And now he began to feel more painfully his
ignorance of society, of practical life, and the outward present.
He blamed himself angrily for having, as he now thought, wasted his
time on ancient histories and foreign travels, while he neglected
the living wonderful present, which weltered daily round him, every
face embodying a living soul. For now he b