No; but that if an opponent menaces me, of whom and without cost of blood
and violence I can get rid, I would rather wait him out, and starve him out,
than fight him out. Fabius fought Hannibal sceptically. Who was his Roman
coadjutor, whom we read of in Plutarch when we were boys, who scoffed at the
other's procrastination and doubted his courage, and engaged the enemy, and was
beaten for his pains?«
 
In these speculations and confessions of Arthur, the reader may perhaps see
allusions to questions which, no doubt, have occupied and discomposed himself,
and which he has answered by very different solutions to those come to by our
friend. We are not pledging ourselves for the correctness of his opinions, which
readers will please to consider are delivered dramatically, the writer being no
more answerable for them than for the sentiments uttered by any other character
of the story: our endeavour is merely to follow out, in its progress, the
development of the mind of a worldly and selfish, but not ungenerous or unkind
or truth-avoiding, man. And it will be seen that the lamentable stage to which
his logic at present has brought him, is one of general scepticism and sneering
acquiescence in the world as it is - or if you like so to call it, a belief
qualified with scorn in all things extant. The tastes and habits of such a man
prevent him from being a boisterous demagogue, and his love of truth and dislike
of cant keep him from advancing crude propositions, such as many loud reformers
are constantly ready with; much more of uttering downright falsehoods in arguing
questions or abusing opponents, which he would die or starve rather than use. It
was not in our friend's nature to be able to utter certain lies; nor was he
strong enough to protest against others, except with a polite sneer; his maxim
being, that he owed obedience to all Acts of Parliament as long as they were not
repealed.
    And to what does this easy and sceptical life lead a man? Friend Arthur was
a Sadducee, and the Baptist might be in the Wilderness shouting to the poor, who
were listening with all their might and faith to the preacher's awful accents
and denunciations of wrath or woe or salvation; and our friend the Sadducee
would turn his sleek mule with a shrug and a smile from the crowd, and go home
to the shade of his terrace, and muse over preacher and audience, and turn to
his roll of Plato, or his pleasant Greek song-book babbling of honey and Hybla,
and nymphs
