classes of society, combined by gunpowder, steam, and fiscality, which has brought them to that dismal degradation in which we see And there are the people of the

them now.

twelfth century.

MR. MAC QUEDY.

As to your king, the enchanter has done him ample justice, even in your own view. As to your lords and their ladies, he has drawn them too favorably, given them too many of the false colors of chivalry, thrown too attractive a light on their abominable doings. As to the people, he keeps them so much in the background, that he can hardly be said to have represented them at all, much less misrepresented them, which indeed he could scarcely do, seeing that, by your own showing, they were all thieves, ready to knock down any man for what they could not come by honestly.

MR. CHAINMAIL.

No, sir. They could come honestly by beef and ale, while they were left to their simple industry. When oppression interfered with them in that, then they stood on the defensive, and fought for what they were not permitted to come by quietly.

MR. MAC QUEDY.

If A., being aggrieved by B., knocks down C., do you call that standing on the defensive?

MR. CHAINMAIL.

That depends on who or what C. is.

THE REV. DR. FOLLIOTT.

Gentlemen, you will never settle this controversy, till you have first settled what is good for man in this world; the great question, de finibus, which has puzzled all philosophers. If the enchanter has represented the twelfth century too brightly for one, and

too darkly for the other of you, I should say, as an impartial man, he has represented it fairly. My quarrel with him is, that his works contain nothing worth quoting; and a book that furnishes no quotations, is me judice, no book,—it is a plaything. There is no question about the amusement,—amusement of multitudes; but if he who amuses us most, is to be our enchanter Kar' oxy, then my enchanter is the enchanter of Covent Garden.

CHAP. X.

THE VOYAGE, CONTINUED.

Continuant nostre routte, navigasmes par trois jours

sans rien descouvrir.

RABELAIS.

"THERE is a beautiful structure," said Mr. Chainmail, as they glided by Lechlade church; "a subject for the pencil, Captain. It is a question worth asking, Mr. Mac Quedy, whether the religious spirit which reared these edifices, and connected with them everywhere an asylum for misfortune, and a provision for poverty, was not better than the commercial spirit, which has turned all the business of modern life into schemes of profit, and processes of fraud and extortion. I do not see, in all your boasted improvements,

any compensation for the religious charity of the twelfth century. I do not see any compensation for that kindly feeling which, within their own little communities, bound the several classes of society together, while full scope was left for the development of natural character, wherein individuals differed as conspicuously as in costume. Now, we all wear one conventional dress, one conventional face; we have no bond of union, but pecuniary interest; we talk any thing that comes uppermost, for talking's sake, and without expecting to be believed; we have no nature, no simplicity, no picturesqueness: everything about us is as artificial and as complicated as our steam-machinery: our poetry is a caleidoscope of false imagery, expressing no real feeling, portraying no real existence. I do not see any compensation for the poetry of the twelfth century."