.«
    »A little while since, young one,« Warrington said, who had been listening
to his friend's confessions neither without sympathy nor scorn, for his mood led
him to indulge in both, »you asked me why I remained out of the strife of the
world, and looked on at the great labour of my neighbour without taking any part
in the struggle. Why, what a mere dilettante you own yourself to be, in this
confession of general scepticism, and what a listless spectator yourself! You
are six-and-twenty years old, and as blasé as a rake of sixty. You neither hope
much, nor care much, nor believe much. You doubt about other men as much as
about yourself. Were it made of such pococuranti as you, the world would be
intolerable; and I had rather live in a wilderness of monkeys, and listen to
their chatter, than in a company of men who denied everything.«
    »Were the world composed of Saint Bernards or Saint Dominics, it would be
equally odious,« said Pen, »and at the end of a few scores of years would cease
to exist altogether. Would you have every man with his head shaved, and every
woman in a cloister - carrying out to the full the ascetic principle? Would you
have conventicle hymns twanging from every lane in every city in the world?
Would you have all the birds of the forest sing one note and fly with one
feather? You call me a sceptic because I acknowledge what is; and in
acknowledging that, be it linnet or lark, a priest or parson - be it, I mean,
any single one of the infinite varieties of the creatures of God (whose very
name I would be understood to pronounce with reverence, and never to approach
but with distant awe), I say that the study and acknowledgment of that variety
amongst men especially increases our respect and wonder for the Creator,
Commander, and Ordainer of all these minds, so different and yet so united -
meeting in a common adoration, and offering up, each according to his degree and
means of approaching the Divine centre, his acknowledgment of praise and
worship, each singing (to recur to the bird simile) his natural song.«
    »And so, Arthur, the hymn of a saint, or the ode of a poet, or the chant of
a Newgate thief, are all pretty much the same in your philosophy,« said George.
    »Even that sneer could be answered were it to the point,« Pendennis replied,
»but it is not;
