whom and without cost of
blood and violence I can get rid, I would rather wait him out, and
starve him out, than fight him out. Fabius fought Hannibal sceptically.
Who was his Roman coadjutor, whom we read of in Plutarch when we
were boys, who scoffed at the other's procrastination and doubted his
courage, and engaged the enemy and was beaten for his pains?"

In these speculations and confessions of Arthur, the reader may
perhaps see allusions to questions which, no doubt, have occupied
and discomposed himself, and which he has answered by very different
solutions to those come to by our friend. We are not pledging ourselves
for the correctness of his opinions, which readers will please to
consider are delivered dramatically, the writer being no more answerable
for them, than for the sentiments uttered by any other character of
the story: our endeavour is merely to follow out, in its progress, the
development of the mind of a worldly and selfish, but not ungenerous or
unkind or truth-avoiding man. And it will be seen that the lamentable
stage to which his logic at present has brought him, is one of general
scepticism and sneering acquiescence in the world as it is; or if you
like so to call it, a belief qualified with scorn in all things extant.
The tastes and habits of such a man prevent him from being a boisterous
demagogue, and his love of truth and dislike of cant keep him from
advancing crude propositions, such as many loud reformers are constantly
ready with; much more of uttering downright falsehoods in arguing
questions or abusing opponents, which he would die or starve rather than
use. It was not in our friend's nature to be able to utter certain lies;
nor was he strong enough to protest against others, except with a
polite sneer; his maxim being, that he owed obedience to all Acts of
Parliament, as long as they were not repealed.

And to what does this easy and sceptical life lead a man? Friend Arthur
was a Sadducee, and the Baptist might be in the Wilderness shouting
to the poor, who were listening with all their might and faith to the
preacher's awful accents and denunciations of wrath or woe or salvation;
and our friend the Sadducee would turn his sleek mule with a shrug and a
smile from the crowd, and go home to the shade of his terrace, and
muse over preacher and audience, and turn to his roll of Plato, or his
pleasant Greek songbook babbling of honey and Hybla, and nymphs and
fountains and love. To wha