"Reckage, though a mean fellow, might give you an opportunity to work a strong Sub-Committee," suggested Disraeli. "One cannot calculate on the course of a man so variable and impulsive. He proposes to get rid of Aumerle, and make concessions to his set. It is an unhappy policy, and always unhappily applied, to imagine that men can be reconciled by partial concessions. I attribute much of Reckage's behaviour to his fear of society. Society itself, however, does not practise any of the virtues which it demands from the individual. It ridicules the highest motives, and degrades the most heroic achievements. It is fed with emotions and spectacles: it cries, laughs, and condemns without knowledge and without enthusiasm. Pitiable indeed is the politician who makes society his moral barometer." "I have urged him to be firm. Christianity was never yet at peace with its age. There is no other Faith whose first teacher was persecuted and crucified. Viewed solely as a point of administration, it is disastrous to cut religious thought according to the fashionable pattern of the hour. This has been the constant weakness of English Churchmen. They try to match eternity with the times." "My opinion is that Reckage must act with considerable caution, or he will find himself repudiated by every party. The English like a fellow to stand by his guns. I come now to your own business. Will you do me a favour? Before you reply let me define it. I have been asked to send some good speaker to Hanborough. The occasion is the opening of a Free Library. Remarks--of a laudatory nature--on the princely munificence of Hanborough's mayor, Hanborough's corporation, Hanborough's leading citizens, a eulogy of their public glories and private virtues--with a little thrown in about Shakespeare, Scott, and the Lord-Lieutenant of the county--would be adequately appreciated. The attendance will be large: the nobility, gentry, and clergy of the neighbourhood will flower about you on the platform; a banquet will follow in the evening, and in the morning blushing girls will hand you bouquets at the railway station. Can you refuse?" "Not easily, I admit," said Robert, laughing; "but Reckage is rather low and unhappy just now about his broken engagement. Wouldn't such an adventure as this take him out of himself?" "This is not an adventure--this is an opportunity," said Disraeli; "it would be nursed into a stepping-stone. I know fifty men who are worrying themselves to death to get it." "You need not tell me that," replied Robert, with gratitude. "It would be a great thing for me. But Reckage is always at his best in functions of the kind. Hanborough might make much of him, and then his Association would feel flattered by reflected honours."