office," he went on, "the matter shall be inquired I think you will agree with me, Mr Lyon, that this will be the most satisfactory course?" into in your presence. I think "Doubtless," said the minister, who liked the candidate very well, and believed that he would be amenable to argument; “and I would caution my young friend against a too great hastiness of words and action. David's cause against Saul was a righteous one; nevertheless not all who clave unto David were righteous men." "The more was the pity, sir," said Felix. pecially if he winked at their malpractices." "Es Mr Lyon smiled, shook his head, and stroked his favourite's arm deprecatingly. It is rather too much for any man to keep the consciences of all his party," said Harold. "If you had lived in the East, as I have, you would be more tolerant. More tolerant, for example, of an active industrious selfishness, such as we have here, though it may not always be quite scrupulous: you would see how much better it is than an idle selfishness. I have heard it said, a bridge is a good thing-worth helping to make, though half the men who worked at it were rogues." "O yes!" said Felix, scornfully, "give me a handful of generalities and analogies, and I'll undertake to justify Burke and Hare, and prove them benefactors of their species. I'll tolerate no nuisances but such as I can't help; and the question now is, not whether we can do away with all the nuisances in the world, but with a particular nuisance under our noses." "Then we had better cut the matter short, as I propose, by going at once to Jermyn's," said Harold. "In that case, I must bid you good-morning, Mr Lyon." "I would fain," said the minister, looking uneasy "I would fain have had a further opportunity of considering that question of the ballot with you. The reasons against it need not be urged lengthily; they only require complete enumeration to prevent any seeming hiatus, where an opposing fallacy might thrust itself in." 'Never fear, sir," said Harold, shaking Mr Lyon's hand cordially," there will be opportunities. Shall I not see you in the committee-room to-morrow?" "I think not," said Mr Lyon, rubbing his brow, with a sad remembrance of his personal anxieties. "But I will send you, if you will permit me, a brief writing, on which you can meditate at your leisure." "I shall be delighted. Good-bye." VOL. II. Harold and Felix went out together; and the minister, going up to his dull study, asked himself whether, under the pressure of conflicting experience, he had faithfully discharged the duties of the past interview? If a cynical sprite were present, riding on one of the motes in that dusty room, he may have made himself merry at the illusions of the little minister who brought so much conscience to bear on the production of so slight an effect. I confess to smiling myself, being sceptical as to the effect of ardent appeals and nice distinctions on gentlemen who are got up, both inside and out, as candidates in the style of the period; but I never smiled at Mr Lyon's trustful energy without falling to penitence and veneration immediately after. For what we call illusions are often, in truth, a wider vision of past and present realities—a willing movement of a man's soul with the larger sweep of the world's forces-a movement towards a more assured end than the chances of a single life. We see human heroism broken into units and say, this unit did little-might as well not have been. But in this way we might break up a great army into units; in this way we might break the sunlight into fragments, and think that this and the other might be cheaply parted with. Let us rather raise a monument to the soldiers whose brave hearts only kept the ranks unbroken, and met death-a monument to the faithful who were not famous, and who are precious as the continuity of the sunbeams is precious, though some of them fall unseen and on barrenness. At present, looking back on that day at Treby, it seems to me that the sadder illusion lay with Harold Transome, who was trusting in his own skill to shape the success of his own morrows, ignorant of what many yesterdays had determined for him beforehand. CHAPTER XVII. It is a good and soothfast saw; JERMYN was not particularly pleased that some chance had apparently hindered Harold Transome from making other canvassing visits immediately after leaving Mr Lyon, and so had sent him back to the office earlier than he had been expected to come. The inconvenient chance he guessed at once to be represented by Felix Holt, whom he knew very well by Trebian report to be a young man with so little of the ordinary Christian motives as to making an appearance and getting on in the world, that he presented no handle to any judicious and respectable person who might be willing to make use of him. Harold Transome, on his side, was a good deal |