man whose leisure was exhausted, and who must go
about his business. But he had left an appetite in his audience for further
oratory, and one of them seemed to express a general sentiment as he turned
immediately to Felix, and said, »Come, sir, what do you say?«
    Felix did at once what he would very likely have done without being asked -
he stepped on to the stone, and took off his cap by an instinctive prompting
that always led him to speak uncovered. The effect of his figure in relief
against the stone background was unlike that of the previous speaker. He was
considerably taller, his head and neck were more massive, and the expression of
his mouth and eyes was something very different from the mere acuteness and
rather hard-lipped antagonism of the trades-union man. Felix Holt's face had the
look of the habitual meditative abstraction from objects of mere personal vanity
or desire, which is the peculiar stamp of culture, and makes a very roughly-cut
face worthy to be called the human face divine. Even lions and dogs know a
distinction between men's glances; and doubtless those Duffield men, in the
expectation with which they looked up at Felix, were unconsciously influenced by
the grandeur of his full yet firm mouth, and the calm clearness of his grey
eyes, which were somehow unlike what they were accustomed to see along with an
old brown velveteen coat, and an absence of chin-propping. When he began to
speak, the contrast of voice was still stronger than that of appearance. The man
in the flannel shirt had not been heard - had probably not cared to be heard -
beyond the immediate group of listeners. But Felix at once drew the attention of
persons comparatively at a distance.
    »In my opinion,« he said, almost the moment after he was addressed, »that
was a true word spoken by our friend when he said the great question was how to
give every man a man's share in life. But I think he expects voting to do more
towards it than I do. I want the working men to have power. I'm a working man
myself, and I don't want to be anything else. But there are two sorts of power.
There's a power to do mischief - to undo what has been done with great expense
and labour, to waste and destroy, to be cruel to the weak, to lie and quarrel,
and to talk poisonous nonsense. That's the sort of power that ignorant numbers
have. It never made a joint