_Mr. Fax._ It cannot be otherwise. The state you have described is adapted only to a small community, and to the infancy of human society. I shall make a very liberal concession to your views, if I admit it to be possible that the middle stage of the progress of man is worse than either the point from which he started or that at which he will arrive. But it is my decided opinion that we have passed that middle stage, and that every evil incident to the present condition of human society will be removed by the diffusion of moral and political knowledge, and the general increase of moral and political liberty. I contemplate with great satisfaction the rapid decay of many hoary absurdities, which a few transcendental hierophants of the venerable and the mysterious are labouring in vain to revive. I look with well-grounded confidence to a period when there will be neither slaves among the northern, nor monks among the southern Americans. The sun of freedom has risen over that great continent, with the certain promise of a glorious day. I form the best hopes for my own country, in the mental improvement of the people, whenever she shall breathe from the pressure of that preposterous system of finance which sooner or later must fall by its own weight. _Mr. Forester._ I apply to our system of finance a fiction of the northern mythology. The ash of Yggdrasil overshadows the world: Ratatosk, the squirrel, sports in the branches: Nidhogger, the serpent, gnaws at the root.[132] The ash of Yggdrasil is the tree of national prosperity: Ratatosk the squirrel is the careless and unreflecting fundholder: Nidhogger the serpent is POLITICAL CORRUPTION, which will in time consume the root, and spread the branches on the dust. What will then become of the squirrel? _Mr. Fax._ Ratatosk must look to himself: Nidhogger must be killed, and the ash of Yggdrasil will rise like a vegetable Phoenix to flourish again for ages. Thus conversing, they arrived on the sea-shore, where we shall leave them to pursue their way, while we investigate the fate of Anthelia. [Illustration: _She immediately ran through the shrubbery._] CHAPTER XLI ALGA CASTLE