I too had something to say about all that. I too knew something about demagogues and working men: but the sight of Lillian made me a coward; and I only sat silent as the thought flashed across me, half ludicrous, half painful, by its contrast, of another who once worked at a carpenter's bench, and fulfilled his mission--not by an old age of wealth, respectability, and port wine; but on the Cross of Calvary. After all, the worthy old gentleman gave me no time to answer. "Next--I think of showing these MSS. to my publisher, to get his opinion as to whether they are worth printing just now. Not that I wish you to build much on the chance. It is not necessary that you should be a poet. I should prefer mathematics for you, as a methodic discipline of the intellect. Most active minds write poetry, at a certain age--I wrote a good deal, I recollect, myself. But that is no reason for publishing. This haste to rush into print is one of the bad signs of the times--a symptom of the unhealthy activity which was first called out by the French revolution. In the Elizabethan age, every decently-educated gentleman was able, as a matter of course, to indite a sonnet to his mistress's eye-brow, or an epigram on his enemy; and yet he never dreamt of printing them. One of the few rational things I have met with, Eleanor, in the works of your very objectionable pet Mr. Carlyle--though indeed his style is too intolerable to have allowed me to read much--is the remark that 'speech is silver'--'silvern' he calls it, pedantically--'while silence is golden.'" At this point of the sermon, Lillian fled from the room, to my extreme disgust. But still the old man prosed-- "I think, therefore, that you had better stay with your cousin for the next week. I hear from Lord Lynedale that he is a very studious, moral, rising young man; and I only hope that you will follow his good example. At the end of the week I shall return home, and then I shall be glad to see more of you at my house at D * * * *, about * * * * miles from this place. Good morning." I went, in rapture at the last announcement--and yet my conscience smote me. I had not stood up for the working men. I had heard them calumniated, and held my tongue--but I was to see Lillian. I had let the dean fancy I was willing to become a pensioner on his bounty--that I was a member of the Church of England, and willing to go to a Church Training School--but I was to see Lillian. I had lowered myself in my own eyes--but I had seen Lillian. Perhaps I exaggerated my own offences: however that may be, love soon, silenced conscience, and I almost danced into my cousin's rooms on my return. * * * * *