'Well, it's not in your mind,' answered Mr. Raymond with sudden asperity; 'you've got your title, and I've got to get mine, my good friend. All I say is, that it is possible that some extraordinarily intelligent person may work out some plan to emancipate us from our dependence upon the sun, just as, when the coal deposits gave out, the universal refractor saved us from being frozen; only we must be quick about it, and not, as in that case, be reduced to our last ray before the substitute is discovered. I can well remember my poor grandmother burning her pianoforte when our woodstack came to an end in February, and the little joke I made about setting Burns to music, which made her cut me out of her will. My grandfather dared not walk out in the fields that spring-which was unusually inclement-because the peasantry had become desperate, and he had a wooden leg.'

6

'Those were evil days indeed,' said Sir Rupert. The government, however, I am glad to see, are taking time by the forelock as respects our present emergency. The application of every ray of sun to useful purposes is strenuously insisted upon, and in last night's 'Gazette' I noticed that to use a burning-glass had been declared felony; moreover, any person found with the sun in his eyes is to be prosecuted by the state."

'All these things are only stopgaps,' observed Mr. Raymond: 'and the man who shall find a substitute for Phoebus Apollo-as my great grandfather yonder was taught to call him, before the bubble of classical education burst, and opened the first gate to the enfranchisement of our youth-will deserve well of his country. My dear Dodo, I think service must be beginning.'

He took up one of the many tubes that hung from the ceiling, and each of whose silver mouthpieces--or rather ear-pieces ('Dionysians,' as they were called after their original inventor)-was engraved with the name of the ecclesiastical edifice with which it communicated, and listened for a few seconds.

"Yes, I hear the opening notes of the organ. Sir Rupert, I see Duncombe has remembered your peculiar tap. Lotty, there is St. Ethelberga's for you and Charley.'

Everybody put on their gloves at once, and took their seats on the divan, and each, with his favourite preacher turned on at his ear, assumed, and perhaps with truth, an attitude of attention. Sir Rupert alone used the nicotina; that agreeable invention which envelops the smoker in a separate atmosphere, and permits the enjoyment of the thought-inspiring weed without annoyance to his neighbours.

'How dreadful it must have been,' observed he, to live in

those straitlaced times, when it was thought wicked to smoke in church.'

'Our service has begun, Sir Rupert,' observed Mrs. Raymond reprovingly.

Ten thousand pardons, madam. I thought it hadn't, which is another proof (if proof were wanting),' &c. &c.

'Hush-sb-sh,' murmured the congregation.

Not a word was uttered for nearly an hour, except that Lotty whispered once 'How beautiful!' at some exquisite passage in the parish curate's sermon, and Charley replied, with his eyes fixed softly on her face, 'It is indeed!' Nothing was heard in that still chamber save the occasional spurt of Sir Rupert's cigar-lights (which lit only on the back of his head), yet everyone was imbibing the best of doctrine, or being elevated by the sublimest music. At last Mrs. Raymond drew off her gloves in sign that she had come out of church, and in a few minutes the others did the like.

'I hope your preacher was to your liking, Sir Rupert?' observed she graciously.

'Excellent, excellent,' said he; not a word that I could have wished unsaid from beginning to end.'

6

The compliment would have been higher, Sir Rupert, if you had heard him say anything,' observed Charley, laughing; but unfortunately you omitted to take the stopper out of your tube.'

'Dear me, dear me; so I did. I am sure I thought I took it out, which is only another proof (if proof were wanting)—'

But the congregation would not listen to him, they were angry, as people always are, and always will be, because they had been to church and he had not.

'You ought to be ashamed of yourself,' said the hostess; that comes of your horrid smoking' (against which practice, like most of her sex, though they can no longer pretend as of old that the smell annoys them, she was always inveighing). The use of that stopper, as you are well aware, is to cut off the communication with the pulpit when anything is said that has a bearing on one's own case likely to render one uncomfortable; it was never intended to render all preaching futile. One would almost think that you wished to silence the voice of conscience itself.'

6

Why, my

when I

Here Mr. Raymond hastily took out his notebook. excellent Dodo, you have given me an idea,' cried he; can spare a minute from my great scheme for producing light and heat, I'll just think that over. If the tube can be discoveredsuppose it's the ordinary bronchial tube, for instance (though, since it is “still small," the Channel is probably of less dimensions)

through which the voice of conscience speaks, I may make a revolution in morals. No more scruples, no more stings of remorse, no more sleepless nights; it will be better than the Revalenta Arabica a revelation from Arabia Felix. What an advertisement to stick on the moon at harvest time! However, as matters are, you're all wrong, Sir Rupert, and my wife is quite right. If it was 1877, and you were obliged to go to chapel in person, anything would be excusable. It must have been most painful, for instance, in some cases to have to "sit under a clergyman.'

'I believe that was a mere metaphorical expression,' said Sir Rupert, preferring even an argument with his host than to suffer the well-deserved rebukes of his hostess; it was a part of the Eastern imagery of our ancestors.'

'Eastern fiddlesticks,' rejoined Mr. Raymond tartly; I hate that system of affixing a non-natural sense of every old phrase which happens to be unintelligible to us. We find the expression "sat upon him" in many of the British classics, and also that of "a flat" as applied to a human being.'

It was nothing but a form of clerical censure,' contended Sir Rupert stoutly. Similarly things were "quashed," or "squashed," in the old ecclesiastical courts. They put heavy weights on silent people in order to get at their opinions; hence the term "expression."

6

That was the peine forte et dure, my good fellow. You are talking about what you don't understand.'

Then I am more likely to be right,' answered Sir Rupert quickly; that is the very gist of my theory. You don't mean to assert, for instance, that the phrase, "I sent George out for a fly because it was wet" (which I found in an old domestic novel of Miss Yonge's yesterday), really meant that he was sent out in an air-chaise, for they were not invented at the time of the story? I firmly believe that it was only Eastern imagery!'

"Then you will believe anything. I don't say there were airchaises, but there was evidently some sort of wind conveyance (we know there were wind instruments), and George is recommended to go out for a fly, because it was wet underfoot. The omission of the last word is obviously a clerical error.'

'Perhaps you think that, when our ancestors used the phrase, "It will be all the same a hundred years hence," that they really thought that?' observed Sir Rupert contemptuously.

'Most certainly I do. In 1877, for instance, exactly a century ago, our ancestors believed that science and politics had culminated, and that there was no further room for improvement. Read the literature of that day, and you will find the writers divided into

two classes, one of which maintains, in effect, that the millennium has arrived, because they have managed to stretch a telegraph wire under the Atlantic, to go some fifty or sixty miles an hour by means of some childish contrivance in the way of a locomotive, and to poke a hole through Mont Cenis. The other class was still more idiotic, for, decrying all these inventions (which, however insignificant, were still steps in the right direction-Forward), they praised the past, and regretted the Cimmerian darkness of the days (if you can call them days) when ideas themselves were proscribed, and persons who notoriously had none were authorised to think for other people. I say that neither of those two classes had the least expectation of improvements going any farther than they were then, and that one of them even regretted they had gone so far. “It will be all the same a hundred years hence," was therefore a literal expression of their self-satisfaction.'

'Perhaps you will also assert that the phrase, "May you live a thousand years," found in the "Arabian Nights" and other books of assuredly Eastern origin, was not metaphorical?'

"Certainly it was not. The "Arabian Nights" (astounding as it may appear to us who look after our children's education ourselves, and do not depute it to hirelings) was then a child's book, and the expression you speak of was in reality written as a question, though printed by mistake without the sign of interrogation. May you live a thousand years?" asks the child of its parent or guardian, and the reply is not stated only because it is so obvious. “You may if you can, my dear, but even Methuselah only got within a year of it." No, no, Sir Rupert, you are one of those persons who delight in paradox, and endeavour from sheer contrariety of mind to persuade yourself that our ancestors were worth having; but that is the old "noble savage" theory which has been exploded generations ago: if you care to be convinced let me show you my museum this afternoon, which contains all the most remarkable specimens of our progenitors a hundred years back, with examples of their follies, crudities, shortcomings, and social obfuscation generally. In the meantime what say you to "going out for a fly, because it is wet?" And let's have no more of your Miss Yonge.'

'She was a very excellent person,' observed Lotty boldly, who thought that poor Sir Rupert had been punished quite enough, ' and wrote good books.'

'Oh! I know them; "Night Thoughts," and all that sort of thing; they were well named, for she was all in the dark, like the rest of them,' replied Mr. Raymond with irritation., Come Charley, signal for the wind-waggon, and let us all get a breath of fresh air.'

CHAPTER III.

IN THE WIND-WAGGON

THE wind-waggon at Mellington Hall was a most comfortable conveyance, and carried off the palm from all the other carriages in the county; the wheels of its air-fans were tireless (whereby a great obstacle to progression was avoided), and were rotated by the conversation of the passengers; so that they went to-day at a fine rate, in spite of the presence of Sir Rupert, who was given to argue in a vicious circle, and thereby diminished the speed. A hand dropped into the water out of a pleasure-boat going up stream retards its progress, but if all hands were dropped out, it would be considerably more buoyant, though its movement would be in the other direction; and similarly if everybody had argued in a vicious circle, the wind-waggon would have gone at a tremendous pace-only backwards.

The rain had ceased, and the atmosphere was beautifully clear, exhibiting the sky lines to great advantage. That to Melbourne and Sydney was crossed immediately after they left the Hall, and but for Charley's skilful steering they would have collided with one of the Australian lines which was carrying the afternoon post.

6

The reticulation of the atmosphere caused by these innumerable lines is really getting very dangerous,' observed Sir Rupert, 'and reminds one of those ancient maps of Britain by Bradshaw, showing the intersection of the railways. The only place in England that did not become a junction was Portland prison, because nobody wanted to go there.'

'A good many people, however, must have wanted to come away,' observed Mr. Raymond.

'A very judicious observation,' admitted Sir Rupert; 'perhaps you will not object to my making use of the idea-which I think may be worked up into something striking-in my place in Parliament?'

Mr. Raymond made no reply; the fact was, he did not approve of his friend being in the House at all; he liked him as a man, but had an indifferent opinion of his abilities, and especially objected to his having been made a knight. No title of course, however small, was ever conferred except for eminent public services; mere ideas, though the source of enormous revenues, did not command that distinction, unless they had been the means of conferring some benefit upon the community; and though jobs were no longer possible in those enlightened times, Sir Rupert's case did somewhat savour of a job. At a time when the two great political