"The heir to this property is little better than a dunce; and they tell me I have talents and learning, and I have taken to my heart the maxim, 'Knowledge is power.' And yet, with all my struggles, will knowledge ever place me on the same level as that on which this dunce is born? I don't wonder that the poor should hate the rich. But of all the poor, who should hate the rich like the pauper gentleman? I suppose Audley Egerton means me to come into Parliament, and be a Tory like himself. What! keep things as they are! No; for me not even Democracy, unless there first come Revolution. I understand the cry of a Marat--'More blood!' Marat had lived as a poor man, and cultivated science--in the sight of a prince's palace." He turned sharply round, and glared vindictively on the poor old hall, which, though a very comfortable habitation, was certainly no palace; and with his arms still folded on his breast, he walked backwards, as if not to lose the view, nor the chain of ideas it conjured up. "But," he continued to soliloquize--"but of revolution there is no chance. Yet the same wit and will that would thrive in revolutions should thrive in this commonplace life. Knowledge is power. Well, then, shall I have no power to oust this blockhead? Oust him--what from? His father's halls? Well, but if he were dead, who would be the heir of Hazeldean? Have I not heard my mother say that I am as near in blood to this Squire as any one, if he had no children? Oh, but the boy's life is worth ten of mine! Oust him from what? At least from the thoughts of his uncle Egerton--an uncle who has never even seen him! That, at least, is more feasible. 'Make my way in life,' sayest thou, Audley Egerton? Ay--and to the fortune thou hast robbed from my ancestors. Simulation--simulation. Lord Bacon allows simulation. Lord Bacon practised it--and--" Here the soliloquy came to a sudden end; for as, rapt in his thoughts, the boy had continued to walk backwards, he had come to the verge where the lawn slided off into the ditch of the ha-ha--and, just as he was fortifying himself by the precept and practice of my Lord Bacon, the ground went from under him, and slap into the ditch went Randal Leslie! It so happened that the Squire, whose active genius was always at some repair or improvement, had been but a few days before widening and sloping off the ditch just in that part, so that the earth was fresh and damp, and not yet either turfed or flattened down. Thus when Randal, recovering his first surprise and shock, rose to his feet, he found his clothes covered with mud; while the rudeness of the fall was evinced by the fantastic and extraordinary appearance of his hat, which, hollowed here, bulging there, and crushed out of all recognition generally, was as little like the hat of a decorous hard-reading young gentlemen--_protege_ of the dignified Mr. Audley Egerton--as any hat picked out of a kennel after some drunken brawl possibly could be.