With what views could I return to London? Of the throng continually pressing onward, to spring into the vacancies of employment, the foremost ranks are unfortunately composed of the selfish, the servile, the intriguing; of those to whose ideas general justice is a chimaera, liberty an empty name, and truth at best a verbal veil for the sycophantic falsehood of a mercenary spirit. To what end could a pupil of the ancient Romans mingle with such a multitude? To cringe, to lie, to flatter? To bow to the insolence of wealth, the superciliousness of rank, the contumely of patronage, that, while it exacts the most abject mental prostration, in return for promises never meant to be performed, despises the servility it fosters, and laughs at the credulity it betrays? The wheel of fortune is like a water-wheel, and human beings are like the waters it disturbs. Many are thrown into the channels of action, many are thrown back to be lost for ever in the stream. I am one of the latter: but I shall not consider it disgraceful to me that I am so, till I see that candour, simplicity, integrity, and intellectual power, directed by benevolence and liberty, have a better claim to worldly estimation, than either venal talent prostituted to the wages of corruption, or ignorance, meanness, and imbecility, exalted by influence and interest. CHAPTER XIV THE COTTAGE _Mr. Fax (in continuation)._ ‘I cannot help thinking,’ said I, when Desmond had done speaking, ‘that you have formed too hasty an estimate of the world. Mr. Vamp and Mr. Dross are bad specimens of human nature: but there are many good specimens of it in both those classes of men. The world is, indeed, full of prejudices and superstitions, which produce ample profit to their venal advocates, who consequently want neither the will nor the power to calumniate and persecute the enlightened and the virtuous. The rich, too, are usually arrogant and exacting, and those feelings will never perish for want of sycophants to nourish them. An ardent love of truth and liberty will, therefore, always prove an almost insuperable barrier to any great degree of worldly advancement. A celebrated divine, who turned his theological morality to very excellent account, and died _en bonne odeur_, used to say, _he could not afford to have a conscience, for it was the most expensive luxury a man could indulge in_. So it certainly is: but, though a conscientious man who has his own way to make in the world, will very seldom flourish in the sunshine of prosperity, it is not, therefore, necessary that he should sit quietly down and starve.’ He said he would think of it, and if he could find any loophole in the great feudal fortress of society, at which poverty and honesty could creep in together, he would try to effect an entrance. I made more particular inquiry into their circumstances, and they at length