wrestle over the matter,
hand and thigh; but a gentleman in the right engaged with a fellow in the wrong
has nothing to apprehend; is, in fact, in the position of a gamepreserver with a
poacher. The nearest approach to gratification in that day's work which Mr.
Romfrey knew was offered by the picture of Nevil's lamentable attitude above his
dirty idol. He conceived it in the mock-mediæval style of our caricaturists: -
Shrapnel stretched at his length, half a league, in slashed yellows and blacks,
with his bauble beside him, and prodigious pointed toes; Nevil in parti-coloured
tights, on one leg, raising his fists in imprecation to a nose in the firmament.
    Gentlemen of an unpractised imaginative capacity cannot vision for
themselves exactly what they would, being unable to exercise authority over the
proportions and the hues of the objects they conceive, which are very much at
the mercy of their sportive caprices; and the state of mind of Mr. Romfrey is
not to be judged by his ridiculous view of the pair. In the abstract he could be
sorry for Shrapnel. As he knew himself magnanimous, he promised himself to be
forbearing with Nevil.
    Moreover, the month of September was drawing nigh; he had plenty to think
of. The entire land (signifying all but all of those who occupy the situation of
thinkers in it) may be said to have been exhaling the same thought in connection
with September. Our England holds possession of a considerable portion of the
globe, and it keeps the world in awe to see her bestowing so considerable a
portion of her intelligence upon her recreations. To prosecute them with her
whole heart is an ingenious exhibition of her power. Mr. Romfrey was of those
who said to his countrymen, »Go yachting; go cricketing; go boat-racing; go
shooting; go horse-racing, nine months of the year, while the other Europeans go
marching and drilling.« Those occupations he considered good for us; and our
much talking, writing, and thinking about them characteristic, and therefore
good. And he was not one of those who do penance for that sweating indolence in
the fits of desperate panic. Beauchamp's argument that the rich idler begets the
idling vagabond, the rich wagerer the brutal swindler, the general thirst for a
mad round of recreation a generally-increasing disposition to avoid serious
work, and the unbraced moral tone of the country an indifference to national
responsibility (an argument doubtless extracted from Shrapnel, talk tall as the
very demagogue when he stood upright), Mr. Romfrey laughed at