The Squire was unusually taciturn--Mrs Hazeldean thoughtful--Mrs Dale languid, and headachy. The Parson, who seldom enjoyed the luxury of converse with a scholar, save when he quarrelled with Dr Riccabocca, was animated, by Randal's repute for ability, into a great desire for argument. "A glass of wine, Mr Leslie. You were saying, before dinner, that burlesque Greek is not a knowledge very much in power at present. Pray, sir, what knowledge is in power?" RANDAL, (laconically.)--"Practical knowledge." PARSON.--"What of?" RANDAL.--"Men." PARSON, (candidly.)--"Well, I suppose that is the most available sort of knowledge, in a worldly point of view. How does one learn it? Do books help?" RANDAL.--"According as they are read, they help or injure." PARSON.--"How should they be read in order to help?" RANDAL.--"Read specially to apply to purposes that lead to power." PARSON, (very much struck with Randal's pithy and Spartan logic.)--"Upon my word, sir, you express yourself very well. I must own that I began these questions in the hope of differing from you; for I like an argument." "That he does," growled the Squire; "the most contradictory creature!" PARSON.--"Argument is the salt of talk. But now I am afraid I must agree with you, which I was not at all prepared for." Randal bowed, and answered--"No two men of our education can dispute upon the application of knowledge." PARSON, (pricking up his ears.)--"Eh! what to?" RANDAL.--"Power, of course." PARSON, (overjoyed.)--"Power!--the vulgarest application of it, or the loftiest? But you mean the loftiest?" RANDAL, (in his turn interested and interrogative.)--"What do you call the loftiest, and what the vulgarest?" PARSON.--"The vulgarest, self-interest; the loftiest, beneficence." Randal suppressed the half disdainful smile that rose to his lip. "You speak, sir, as a clergyman should do. I admire your sentiment, and adopt it; but I fear that the knowledge which aims only at beneficence very rarely in this world gets any power at all." SQUIRE, (seriously.)--"That's true; I never get my own way when I want to do a kindness, and Stirn always gets his when he insists on something diabolically brutal and harsh." PARSON.--"Pray, Mr Leslie, what does intellectual power refined to the utmost, but entirely stripped of beneficence, most resemble?" RANDAL.--"Resemble?--I can hardly say. Some very great man--almost any very great man--who has baffled all his foes, and attained all his ends." PARSON.--"I doubt if any man has ever become very great who has not meant to be beneficent, though he might err in the means. Cæsar was naturally beneficent, and so was Alexander. But intellectual power refined to the utmost, and wholly void of beneficence, resembles only one being, and that, sir, is the Principle of Evil." RANDAL, (startled.)--"Do you mean the Devil?"