"Pray," said Cecil, smiling, "can you explain to me what this spirit of the age actually is? I hear a great deal about it, and comprehend nothing that I hear. Is our age so very different from all those that have gone before it?" "Assuredly: it is the age of progress." "Progress? but _that_ is the characteristic of all ages; society never stands still." "True, but sometimes it retrogrades, and now it advances. My dear Mr. Chamberlayne, you will not deny that the peculiarity of our age is not only progress, but consciousness of progress." "That is to say, I suppose, while our forefathers contented themselves with advancing, we prate about our advance. Now, of that kind of consciousness I am as decided an enemy as Carlyle himself; and his eloquent denunciations of it as the disease of our time find full acceptance from me." "Ah! my dear sir, Carlyle, with all his genius, does not understand the historic development of humanity." "Perhaps not; nor do I: though I have tried. But it still seems to me an evil, not a benefit, that our modern reformers are so very conscious--" "Stop! You will not deny that every man should have a Purpose?" Cecil, who knew this was one of the magnificent aphorisms of the "earnest" school, paused for a reply. Seeing him hesitate, Mr. Jukes, a sickly red-haired republican, with a feeble falsetto voice, stammered forth-- "Is it p-p-p-possible, Mr. Ch-ch-chamberlayne, you can hesitate to p-p-pronounce that e-e-every man should have a p-p-p-purpose?" There was something so marvellously ludicrous in the feebleness of the individual, contrasted with the apparent vigour of his doctrine, that Cecil could with difficulty restrain his laughter, and hastened to say-- "By no means--by no means. I presume every one _has_ a purpose; but, then, the question is--what purpose?" "If you admit," said Hester, "that a man must have a Purpose, it is surely unreasonable to wish him not to be distinctly conscious of it: then, only, can he best fulfil it; otherwise, he is a mere machine in the hands of fortune. I say, therefore, that the consciousness of our age is the consciousness of progress; each man of any real eminence has a Mission, and he knows it; that Mission is to get the broad principles of Humanity in its entire Developments fully recognised. That Mission," she continued, with rising warmth, "is to sweep from the face of the earth the worn-out sophisms which enslave it; to give Mind its high Prerogatives; to cut from the heart of society the cancer of Conventionalism which corrupts it; to place Man in majestic antagonism to Convention; to erect the Banner of Progress, and give the democratic Mind of Europe its unfettered sphere of action." "A grand scheme," replied Cecil, smiling; "but how is all this to be accomplished?" "By indomitable re-re-resolution; b-b-b-by f-f-f-ixity of p-p-purpose," suggested Jukes. "By a recognition of the rights of women," sternly remarked the philosophical Mrs. Fuller.