“In very truth we are, Lady Bride----” “Ah! no; not _Lady_ Bride to you, when we are alone like this,” she pleaded. “It never used to be so. Let it be Bride again, as though I were a child. Ah! would that I were, and that _she_ were with me! Oh, it is all so dark and perplexing now!” “It is, my child, it is, even for the best and wisest on the earth. Let us take comfort in the thought that it is light with God, and that He sees the working out of His eternal purposes, even where most let and hindered by the sin and opposition of man. A time of darkness is upon us--that none can deny--not in this land alone, but in all the lands of Christendom; and you are right in your feeling that it is not the ignorant masses who are alone in fault. We--the Church--the nobility, the great ones of the earth, have failed again and again in our duties towards those below them, and now they have to suffer. Two wrongs do not make one right, and the method in which the ignorant seem like to set to work is not only foolish, but sinful also; and in our sense of sympathy for the people and our self-reprobation, we must not palliate, even though we may partially understand the cause of the sin. It is right that the people should be thought of and rightly done by. God has taught us that again and again; but it is not the ordinance of God that the people should govern--and yet, if I read my Bible and interpret aright, that is what we shall come to in the days of the end; it will no longer be the voice of God, nor yet the voice of the king which will prevail, but the voice of the people; and we shall again hear in newer and more subtle forms that word of blasphemy which tells us that the voice of the people is the voice of God.” “Ah! do you think so? That is what I have heard said; but surely it will take long, very long, to accomplish?” “Perhaps; I know not. In France it was accomplished in a few terrible years. Methinks in this land, where God has been so gracious times and again, it may be differently done and with less of terror and bloodshed; but the end will assuredly be the same. One can see, even from a worldly aspect, how it will be accomplished. Men say, and with justice and truth, that there should be in the community, for the good of all, a fair class representation--that is, that each class should have such a voice in the discussion of the affairs of the nation as will secure for that class the meed of justice and consideration to which its position entitles it. At present this is not so. The rising and important middle class have almost no representation, and the labouring and artisan class none. Yet they have a stake in the country, and are entitled to a voice.” “That is what Eustace says, and it sounds right.”