a wise man,« said Felix. »Why should I want to get into the
middle class because I have some learning? The most of the middle class are as
ignorant as the working people about everything that doesn't belong to their own
Brummagem life. That's how the working men are left to foolish devices and keep
worsening themselves: the best heads among them forsake their born comrades, and
go in for a house with a high door-step and a brass knocker.«
    Mr Lyon stroked his mouth and chin, perhaps because he felt some disposition
to smile; and it would not be well to smile too readily at what seemed but a
weedy resemblance of Christian unworldliness. On the contrary, there might be a
dangerous snare in an unsanctified outstepping of average Christian practice.
    »Nevertheless,« he observed, gravely, »it is by such self-advancement that
many have been enabled to do good service to the cause of liberty and to the
public wellbeing. The ring and the robe of Joseph were no objects for a good
man's ambition, but they were the signs of that credit which he won by his
divinely-inspired skill, and which enabled him to act as a saviour to his
brethren.«
    »O yes, your ringed and scented men of the people! - I won't be one of them.
Let a man once throttle himself with a satin stock, and he'll get new wants and
new motives. Metamorphosis will have begun at his neck-joint, and it will go on
till it has changed his likings first and then his reasoning, which will follow
his likings as the feet of a hungry dog follow his nose. I'll have none of your
clerkly gentility. I might end by collecting greasy pence from poor men to buy
myself a fine coat and a glutton's dinner, on pretence of serving the poor men.
I'd sooner be Paley's fat pigeon than a demagogue all tongue and stomach,
though« - here Felix changed his voice a little - »I should like well enough to
be another sort of demagogue, if I could.«
    »Then you have a strong interest in the great political movements of these
times?« said Mr Lyon, with a perceptible flashing of the eyes.
    »I should think so. I despise every man who has not - or, having it, doesn't
try to rouse it in other men.«
    »Right, my young friend, right,« said the minister, in a deep cordial tone.
Inevitably his mind was