ommon at our great
public schools."

"I am at school now for the first time," answered Leonard, dryly.

"Experience is the best schoolmistress," said Burley; "and that was the
maxim of Goethe, who had book-learning enough, in all conscience."

Randal slightly shrugged his shoulders, and without wasting another
thought on Leonard, peasant-born and self-taught, took his seat, and
began to talk to Burley upon a political question, which made then the
war-cry between the two great parliamentary parties. It was a subject
in which Burley showed much general knowledge; and Randal, seeming to
differ from him, drew forth alike his information and his argumentative
powers. The conversation lasted more than an hour.

"I can't quite agree with you," said Randal, taking his leave; "but you
must allow me to call again,--will the same hour tomorrow suit you?"

"Yes," said Burley.

Away went the young man in his cabriolet. Leonard watched him from the
window.

For five days, consecutively, did Randal call and discuss the question
in all its bearings; and Burley, after the second day, got interested
in the matter, looked up his authorities, refreshed his memory, and even
spent an hour or two in the Library of the British Museum.

By the fifth day, Burley had really exhausted all that could well be
said on his side of the question.

Leonard, during these colloquies, had sat apart seemingly absorbed in
reading, and secretly stung by Randal's disregard of his presence. For
indeed that young man, in his superb self-esteem, and in the absorption
of his ambitious projects, scarce felt even curiosity as to Leonard's
rise above his earlier station, and looked on him as a mere journeyman
of Burley's.

But the self-taught are keen and quick observers; and Leonard had
remarked that Randal seemed more as one playing a part for some private
purpose, than arguing in earnest; and that, when he rose, and said, "Mr.
Burley, you have convinced me," it was not with the modesty of a sincere
reasoner, but the triumph of one who has gained his end. But so struck,
meanwhile, was our unheeded and silent listener with Burley's power of
generalization and the wide surface over which his information
extended, that when Randal left the room the boy looked at the slovenly,
purposeless man, and said aloud, "True; knowledge is not power."

"Certainly not," said Burley, dryly,--"the weakest thing in the world."

"Knowledge is power," muttered Randal Lesl