e, and on the principles of contradiction. Mr.
C---- having thus triumphed in argument, offers a flower to the notice
of the company as a specimen of his flower-garden, a curious exotic,
nothing like it to be found in this kingdom; talks of his carnations, of
his country-house, and old English hospitality, but never invites any of
his friends to come down and take their Sunday's dinner with him. He is
mean and ostentatious at the same time, insolent and servile, does
not know whether to treat those he converses with as if they were his
porters or his customers: the prentice-boy is not yet wiped out of him,
and his imagination still hovers between his mansion at ----- and
the workhouse. Opposed to him and to every one else is B., a radical
reformer and logician, who makes clear work of the taxes and National
Debt, reconstructs the Government from the first principles of things,
shatters the Holy Alliance at a blow, grinds out the future prospects of
society with a machine, and is setting out afresh with the commencement
of the French Revolution five and twenty years ago, as if on an untried
experiment. He minds nothing but the formal agreement of his premises
and his conclusions, and does not stick at obstacles in the way, nor
consequences in the end. If there was but one side of a question, he
would be always in the right. He casts up one column of the account to
admiration, but totally forgets and rejects the other. His ideas lie
like square pieces of wood in his brain, and may be said to be piled
up on a stiff architectural principle, perpendicularly, and at
right angles. There is no inflection, no modification, no graceful
embellishment, no Corinthian capitals. I never heard him agree to two
propositions together, or to more than half a one at a time. His rigid
love of truth bends to nothing but his habitual love of disputation. He
puts one in mind of one of those long-headed politicians and frequenters
of coffee-houses mentioned in Berkeley's _Minute Philosopher,_ who would
make nothing of such old-fashioned fellows as Plato and Aristotle. He
has the new light strong upon him, and he knocks other people down with
its solid beams. He denies that he has got certain views out of Cobbett,
though he allows that there are excellent ideas occasionally to be met
with in that writer. It is a pity that this enthusiastic and unqualified
regard to truth should be accompanied with an equal exactness of
expenditure and unrelenting