ing, "I refute him so!"
Now (as I pointed out) kicking a stone would not make the metaphysical
quarrel quite clear; besides, it would hurt. But how picturesque
and perfect it would be if I moved across the ground in the symbolic
attitude of kicking Bishop Berkeley! How complete an allegoric group;
the great transcendentalist walking with his head among the stars, but
behind him the avenging realist pede claudo, with uplifted foot. But I
must not take up space with these forgotten frivolities; we old men grow
too garrulous in talking of the distant past.

This story scarcely concerns me either in my real or my assumed
character. Suffice it to say that the procession took place at night
in a large garden and by torchlight (so remote is the date), that the
garden was crowded with Puritans, monks, and men-at-arms, and especially
with early Celtic saints smoking pipes, and with elegant Renaissance
gentlemen talking Cockney. Suffice it to say, or rather it is needless
to say, that I got lost. I wandered away into some dim corner of that
dim shrubbery, where there was nothing to do except tumbling over tent
ropes, and I began almost to feel like my prototype, and to share his
horror of solitude and hatred of a country life.

In this detachment and dilemma I saw another man in a white wig
advancing across this forsaken stretch of lawn; a tall, lean man, who
stooped in his long black robes like a stooping eagle. When I thought
he would pass me, he stopped before my face, and said, "Dr. Johnson, I
think. I am Paley."

"Sir," I said, "you used to guide men to the beginnings of Christianity.
If you can guide me now to wherever this infernal thing begins you will
perform a yet higher and harder function."

His costume and style were so perfect that for the instant I really
thought he was a ghost. He took no notice of my flippancy, but, turning
his black-robed back on me, led me through verdurous glooms and winding
mossy ways, until we came out into the glare of gaslight and laughing
men in masquerade, and I could easily laugh at myself.

And there, you will say, was an end of the matter. I am (you will say)
naturally obtuse, cowardly, and mentally deficient. I was, moreover,
unused to pageants; I felt frightened in the dark and took a man for a
spectre whom, in the light, I could recognise as a modern gentleman in
a masquerade dress. No; far from it. That spectral person was my first
introduction to a special incident which has