t apart from, the people, may be seen when great crises come. Can it
stop a war? The people would, and with thunder, had they the medium. But
in strong gales the power of the Press collapses; it wheezes like a
pricked pigskin of a piper. At its best Beauchamp regarded our lordly
Press as a curiously diapered curtain and delusive mask, behind which the
country struggles vainly to show an honest feature; and as a trumpet that
deafened and terrorized the people; a mere engine of leaguers banded to
keep a smooth face upon affairs, quite soullessly: he meanwhile having to
be dumb.

But a Journal that should be actually independent of circulation and
advertisements: a popular journal in the true sense, very lungs to the
people, for them to breathe freely through at last, and be heard out of
it, with well-paid men of mark to head and aid them;--the establishment
of such a Journal seemed to him brave work of a life, though one should
die early. The money launching it would be coin washed pure of its
iniquity of selfish reproduction, by service to mankind. This DAWN of his
conception stood over him like a rosier Aurora for the country. He beheld
it in imagination as a new light rising above hugeous London. You turn
the sheets of THE DAWN, and it is the manhood of the land addressing you,
no longer that alternately puling and insolent cry of the coffers. The
health, wealth, comfort, contentment of the greater number are there to
be striven for, in contempt of compromise and 'unseasonable times.'

Beauchamp's illuminated dream of the power of his DAWN to vitalize old
England, liberated him singularly from his wearing regrets and
heart-sickness.

Surely Cecilia, who judged him sincere, might be bent to join hands with
him for so good a work! She would bring riches to her husband:
sufficient. He required the ablest men of the country to write for him,
and it was just that they should be largely paid. They at least in their
present public apathy would demand it. To fight the brewers, distillers,
publicans, the shopkeepers, the parsons, the landlords, the law limpets,
and also the indifferents, the logs, the cravens and the fools, high
talent was needed, and an ardour stimulated by rates of pay outdoing the
offers of the lucre-journals. A large annual outlay would therefore be
needed; possibly for as long as a quarter of a century. Cecilia and her
husband would have to live modestly. But her inheritance would be
immense. Colonel Hal