Sir George listened with the interest with which an Englishman of his class always endeavours to catch a concession that he fancies is about to favour his own political predilections, and he felt encouraged to push the subject further. "And you think the political machine is rolling downwards towards this bottom?" he said, with an interest in the answer that, living in the quiet and forgetfulness of his own home, he would have laughed at himself for entertaining. But our sensibilities become quickened by collision, and opposition is known even to create love. Mrs. Bloomfield was quick-witted, intelligent, cultivated and shrewd. She saw the motive at a glance, and, notwithstanding she saw and felt all its abuses, strongly attached to the governing principle of her country's social organization, as is almost universally the case with the strongest minds and most generous hearts of the nation, she was not disposed to let a stranger carry away a false impression of her sentiments on such a point. "Did you ever study logic, Sir George Templemore?" she asked, archly. "A little, though not enough I fear to influence my mode of reasoning, or even to leave me familiar with the terms." "Oh! I am not about to assail you with _sequiturs_ and _non sequiturs_ dialectics and all the mysteries of _Denk-Lehre,_ but simply to remind you there is such a thing as the bottom of a subject. When I tell you we are flying towards the bottom of our institutions, it is in the intellectual sense, and not, as you have erroneously imagined, in an unintellectual sense. I mean that we are getting to understand them, which, I fear, we did not absolutely do at the commencement of the 'experiment.'" "But I think you will admit, that as the civilization of the country advances, some material changes must occur; your people cannot always remain stationary; they must either go backwards or forward." "Up or down, if you will allow me to correct your phraseology. The civilization of the country, in one sense at least, is retrogressive, and the people, as they cannot go 'up,' betray a disposition to go 'down.'" "You deal in enigmas, and I am afraid to think I understand you." "I mean, merely, that gallowses are fast disappearing, and that the people--_le peuple_ you will understand--begin to accept money. In both particulars, I think there is a sensible change for the worse, within my own recollection."