owledge."

PARSON.--"What of?"

RANDAL.--"Men."

PARSON (candidly).--"Well, I suppose that is the most available sort of
knowledge, in a worldly point of view. How does one learn it? Do books
help?"

RANDAL.--"According as they are read, they help or injure."

PARSON.--"How should they be read in order to help?"

RANDAL.--"Read specially to apply to purposes that lead to power."

PARSON (very much struck with Randal's pithy and Spartan logic).--"Upon
my word, Sir, you express yourself very well. I must own that I began
these questions in the hope of differing from you; for I like an
argument."

"That he does," growled the squire; "the most contradictory creature!"

PARSON.--"Argument is the salt of talk. But now I am afraid I must agree
with you, which I was not at all prepared for."

Randal bowed and answered, "No two men of our education can dispute upon
the application of knowledge."

PARSON (pricking up his ears).--"Eh?--what to?"

RANDAL.--"Power, of course."

PARSON (overjoyed).--"Power!--the vulgarest application of it, or the
loftiest? But you mean the loftiest?"

RANDAL (in his turn interested and interrogative).--"What do you call
the loftiest, and what the vulgarest?"

PARSON.--"The vulgarest, self-interest; the loftiest, beneficence."

Randal suppressed the half-disdainful smile that rose to his lip.

"You speak, Sir, as a clergyman should do. I admire your sentiment, and
adopt it; but I fear that the knowledge which aims only at beneficence
very rarely in this world gets any power at all."

SQUIRE (seriously).--"That's true; I never get my own way when I want
to do a kindness, and Stirn always gets his when he insists on something
diabolically brutal and harsh."

PARSON.--"Pray, Mr. Leslie, what does intellectual power refined to the
utmost, but entirely stripped of beneficence, most resemble?"

RANDAL.--"Resemble?--I can hardly say. Some very great man--almost
any very great man--who has baffled all his foes, and attained all his
ends."

PARSON.--"I doubt if any man has ever become very great who has not
meant to be beneficent, though he might err in the means. Caesar was
naturally beneficent, and so was Alexander. But intellectual power
refined to the utmost, and wholly void of beneficence, resembles only
one being, and that, sir, is the Principle of Evil."

RANDAL (startled).--"Do you mean the Devil?"

PARSON.--"Yes, Sir, the Devil; and even he, Sir, did not succeed! Even
he