But now he was driven to a wider range. Those higher Pharisees who were above him in his own pharisaical establishment, had interfered with the austerity of his worship. He could not turn against them there, on their own ground. He, of all men, could not be disobedient to official orders. But if he could promote a movement beyond the walls of the Weights and Measures; if he could make Pharisees of those benighted publicans in the Strand; if he could introduce conic sections into the Custom House, and political economy into the Post Office; if, by any effort of his, the Foreign Office clerks could be forced to attend punctually at ten; and that wretched saunterer, whom five days a week he saw lounging into the Council Office--if he could be made to mend his pace, what a wide field for his ambition would Mr. Hardlines then have found! Great ideas opened themselves to his mind as he walked to and from his office daily. What if he could become the parent of a totally different order of things! What if the Civil Service, through his instrumentality, should become the nucleus of the best intellectual diligence in the country, instead of being a byword for sloth and ignorance! Mr. Hardlines meditated deeply on this, and, as he did so, it became observed on all sides that he was an altered man as regarded his solicitude for the Weights and Measures. One or two lads crept in, by no means conspicuous for their attainments in abstract science; young men, too, were observed to leave not much after four o'clock, without calling down on themselves Mr. Hardlines' usual sarcasm. Some said he was growing old, others that he was broken-hearted. But Mr. Hardlines was not old, nor broken in heart or body. He was thinking of higher things than the Weights and Measures, and at last he published a pamphlet. Mr. Hardlines had many enemies, all in the Civil Service, one of the warmest of whom was Mr. Oldeschole, of the Navigation, and at first they rejoiced greatly that Job's wish had been accomplished on their behalf, and that their enemy had written a book. They were down on Mr. Hardlines with reviews, counter pamphlets, official statements, and indignant contradiction; but Mr. Hardlines lived through this storm of missiles, and got his book to be fêted and made much of by some Government pundits, who were very bigwigs indeed. And at last he was invited over to the building on the other side, to discuss the matter with a President, a Secretary of State, a Lord Commissioner, two joint Secretaries, and three Chairmen.