or the people one meets every day? If A. asks me to his house,
and gives me his best, I take his good things for what they are worth
and no more. I do not profess to pay him back in friendship, but in the
conventional money of society. When we part, we part without any grief.
When we meet, we are tolerably glad to see one another. If I were only
to live with my friends, your black muzzle, old George, is the only face
I should see."

"You are your uncle's pupil," said Warrington, rather sadly; "and you
speak like a worldling."

"And why not?" asked Pendennis; "why not acknowledge the world I stand
upon, and submit to the conditions of the society which we live in
and live by? I am older than you, George, in spite of your grizzled
whiskers, and have seen much more of the world than you have in your
garret here, shut up with your books and your reveries and your ideas of
one-and-twenty. I say, I take the world as it is, and being of it, will
not be ashamed of it. If the time is out of joint, have I any calling or
strength to set it right?"

"Indeed, I don't think you have much of either," growled Pen's
interlocutor.

"If I doubt whether I am better than my neighbour," Arthur continued,
"if I concede that I am no better,--I also doubt whether he is better
than I. I see men who begin with ideas of universal reform, and who,
before their beards are grown, propound their loud plans for the
regeneration of mankind, give up their schemes after a few years of
bootless talking and vainglorious attempts to lead their fellows; and
after they have found that men will no longer bear them, as indeed
they never were in the least worthy to be heard, sink quietly into the
ranks-and-file,--acknowledging their aims impracticable, or thankful
that they were never put into practice. The fiercest reformers grow
calm, and are faire to put up with things as they are: the loudest
Radical orators become dumb, quiescent placemen: the most fervent
Liberals when out of power, become humdrum Conservatives or downright
tyrants or despots in office. Look at the Thiers, look at Guizot, in
opposition and in place! Look at the Whigs appealing to the country, and
the Whigs in power! Would you say that the conduct of these men is an
act of treason, as the Radicals bawl,--who would give way in their turn,
were their turn ever to come? No, only that they submit to circumstances
which are stronger than they,--march as the world marches towards
reform, but