A worthy couple in the village had a son, who being slight and puny, compared to the Cumberland breed, was shouldered out of the market of agricultural labour, and went off, yet a boy, to a manufacturing town. Now about the age of thirty, this mechanic, disabled for his work by a long illness, came home to recover; and in a short time we heard of nothing but the pestilential doctrines with which he was either shocking or infecting our primitive villagers. According to report, Corcyra itself never engendered a democrat more awful. The poor man was really very ill, and his parents very poor; but his unfortunate doctrines dried up all the streams of charity that usually flowed through our kindly hamlet. The clergyman (an excellent man, but of the old school) walked by the house as if it were tabooed. The apothecary said "Miles Square ought to have wine," but he did not send him any. The farmers held his name in execration, for he had incited all their labourers to strike for another shilling a-week. And but for the old tower, Miles Square would soon have found his way to the only republic in which he could obtain that democratic fraternisation for which he sighed--the grave being, I suspect, the sole commonwealth which attains that dead flat of social equality, that life in its every principle so heartily abhors. My uncle went to see Miles Square, and came back the colour of purple. Miles Square had preached him a long sermon on the unholiness of war. "Even in defence of your king and country!" had roared the Captain; and Miles Square had replied with a remark upon kings, in general, that the Captain could not have repeated without expecting to see the old tower fall about his ears; and with an observation about the country, in particular, to the effect that "the country would be much better off if it _were_ conquered!" On hearing the report of these loyal and patriotic replies, my father said, "Papæ!" and, roused out of his usual philosophical indifference, went himself to visit Miles Square. My father returned as pale as my uncle had been purple. "And to think," said he mournfully, "that in the town whence this man comes, there are, he tells me, ten thousand other of God's creatures who speed the work of civilisation while execrating its laws!"