on
preach to him such a sermon as that which he had just uttered!
Perhaps there is no question more difficult to a man's mind than that
of the expediency or inexpediency of scruples in political life.
Whether would a candidate for office be more liable to rejection from
a leader because he was known to be scrupulous, or because he was
known to be the reverse?

"But putting aside the fourth commandment and all the theories, you
will come to Ireland?" said Phineas.

"I shall be delighted."

"I don't live in a castle, you know."

"I thought everybody did live in a castle in Ireland," said Mr. Monk.
"They seemed to do when I was there twenty years ago. But for myself,
I prefer a cottage."

This trip to Ireland had been proposed in consequence of certain
ideas respecting tenant-right which Mr. Monk was beginning to adopt,
and as to which the minds of politicians were becoming moved. It
had been all very well to put down Fenianism, and Ribandmen, and
Repeal,--and everything that had been put down in Ireland in the way
of rebellion for the last seventy-five years. England and Ireland
had been apparently joined together by laws of nature so fixed,
that even politicians liberal as was Mr. Monk,--liberal as was Mr.
Turnbull,--could not trust themselves to think that disunion could
be for the good of the Irish. They had taught themselves that it
certainly could not be good for the English. But if it was incumbent
on England to force upon Ireland the maintenance of the Union for her
own sake, and for England's sake, because England could not afford
independence established so close against her own ribs,--it was at
any rate necessary to England's character that the bride thus
bound in a compulsory wedlock should be endowed with all the best
privileges that a wife can enjoy. Let her at least not be a kept
mistress. Let it be bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, if we
are to live together in the married state. Between husband and
wife a warm word now and then matters but little, if there be a
thoroughly good understanding at bottom. But let there be that good
understanding at bottom. What about this Protestant Church; and what
about this tenant-right? Mr. Monk had been asking himself these
questions for some time past. In regard to the Church, he had long
made up his mind that the Establishment in Ireland was a crying sin.
A man had married a woman whom he knew to be of a religion different
from his own, and then insisted th