I must for the present leave my readers to imagine the state of Mr
Harding's mind after reading the above article. They say that forty
thousand copies of _The Jupiter_ are daily sold, and that each copy is
read by five persons at the least. Two hundred thousand readers then
would hear this accusation against him; two hundred thousand hearts
would swell with indignation at the griping injustice, the barefaced
robbery of the warden of Barchester Hospital! And how was he to
answer this? How was he to open his inmost heart to this multitude,
to these thousands, the educated, the polished, the picked men of his
own country; how show them that he was no robber, no avaricious, lazy
priest scrambling for gold, but a retiring, humble-spirited man, who
had innocently taken what had innocently been offered to him?

"Write to _The Jupiter_," suggested the bishop.

"Yes," said the archdeacon, more worldly wise than his father, "yes,
and be smothered with ridicule; tossed over and over again with
scorn; shaken this way and that, as a rat in the mouth of a practised
terrier. You will leave out some word or letter in your answer, and
the ignorance of the cathedral clergy will be harped upon; you will
make some small mistake, which will be a falsehood, or some admission,
which will be self-condemnation; you will find yourself to have been
vulgar, ill-tempered, irreverend, and illiterate, and the chances are
ten to one, but that being a clergyman, you will have been guilty of
blasphemy! A man may have the best of causes, the best of talents,
and the best of tempers; he may write as well as Addison, or as
strongly as Junius; but even with all this he cannot successfully
answer, when attacked by _The Jupiter_. In such matters it is
omnipotent. What the Czar is in Russia, or the mob in America, that
_The Jupiter_ is in England. Answer such an article! No, warden;
whatever you do, don't do that. We were to look for this sort of
thing, you know; but we need not draw down on our heads more of it
than is necessary."

The article in _The Jupiter_, while it so greatly harassed our poor
warden, was an immense triumph to some of the opposite party. Sorry
as Bold was to see Mr Harding attacked so personally, it still gave
him a feeling of elation to find his cause taken up by so powerful
an advocate: and as to Finney, the attorney, he was beside himself.
What! to be engaged in the same cause and on the same side with
_The Jupiter_; t