existing circumstances: and so in a dream of power he invokes the people:
and as they do not stir, he takes to prophecy. This is the round of the
politics of impatience. The study of politics should be guided by some
light of statesmanship, otherwise it comes to this wild preaching.

These men are theory-tailors, not politicians. They are the men who make
the "strait-waistcoat for humanity." They would fix us to first
principles like tethered sheep or hobbled horses. I should enjoy replying
to him, if I had time. The whole letter is composed of variations upon
one idea. Still I must say the man interests me; I should like to talk to
him.'

Mr. Austin paid no heed to the colonel's 'Dear me! dear me!' of
amazement. He said of the style of the letters, that it was the puffing
of a giant: a strong wind rather than speech: and begged Cecilia to note
that men who labour to force their dreams on mankind and turn vapour into
fact, usually adopt such a style. Hearing that this private letter had
been deliberately read through by Mr. Romfrey, and handed by him to
Captain Baskelett, who had read it out in various places, Mr. Austin
said:

'A strange couple!' He appeared perplexed by his old friend's approval of
them. 'There we decidedly differ,' said he, when the case of Dr. Shrapnel
was related by the colonel, with a refusal to condemn Mr. Romfrey. He
pronounced Mr. Romfrey's charges against Dr. Shrapnel, taken in
conjunction with his conduct, to be baseless, childish, and wanton. The
colonel would not see the case in that light; but Cecilia did. It was a
justification of Beauchamp; and how could she ever have been blind to
it?--scarcely blind, she remembered, but sensitively blinking her eyelids
to distract her sight in contemplating it, and to preserve her repose. As
to Beauchamp's demand of the apology, Mr. Austin considered that it might
be an instance of his want of knowledge of men, yet could not be called
silly, and to call it insane was the rhetoric of an adversary.

'I do call it insane,' said the colonel.

He separated himself from his daughter by a sharp division.

Had Beauchamp appeared at Mount Laurels, Cecilia would have been ready to
support and encourage him, boldly. Backed by Mr. Austin, she saw some
good in Dr. Shrapnel's writing, much in Beauchamp's devotedness. He shone
clear to her reason, at last: partly because her father in his opposition
to him did not, but was on the contrary unreasonable, cased in