e
and the Angels of Knowledge,--the first missed the stars they had lost,
and wandered back through the darkness, one by one, into heaven; but the
last, lighted on by their own lurid splendours, said, 'Wherever we go,
there is heaven!' And deeper and lower descending, lost their shape
and their nature, till, deformed and obscene, the bottomless pit closed
around them."

MR. SQUILLS.--"I should not have thought, Mr. Caxton, that a book-man
like you would be thus severe upon Knowledge."

MR. CAXTON (in wrath).--"Severe upon knowledge! Oh, Squills, Squills,
Squills! Knowledge perverted is knowledge no longer. Vinegar, which,
exposed to the sun, breeds small serpents, or at best slimy eels, not
comestible, once was wine. If I say to my grandchildren, 'Don't drink
that sour stuff, which the sun itself fills with reptiles,' does that
prove me a foe to sound sherry? Squills, if you had but received a
scholastic education, you would know the wise maxim that saith, 'All
things the worst are corruptions from things originally designed as the
best.' Has not freedom bred anarchy, and religion fanaticism? And if I
blame Marat calling for blood, or Dominic racking a heretic, am I severe
on the religion that canonized Francis de Sales, or the freedom that
immortalized Thrasybulus?"

Mr. Squills, dreading a catalogue of all the saints in the calendar,
and an epitome of Ancient History, exclaimed eagerly, "Enough, sir; I am
convinced!"

MR. CAXTON.--"Moreover, I have thought it a natural stroke of art in
Pisistratus to keep Randal Leslie, in his progress towards the rot
of the intellect unwholesomely refined, free from all the salutary
influences that deter ambition from settling into egotism. Neither in
his slovenly home, nor from his classic tutor at his preparatory school,
does he seem to have learned any truths, religious or moral, that might
give sap to fresh shoots, when the first rank growth was cut down by the
knife; and I especially noted, as illustrative of Egerton, no less than
of Randal, that though the statesman's occasional hints of advice to
his protege are worldly wise in their way, and suggestive of honour as
befitting the creed of a gentleman, they are not such as much influence
a shrewd reasoner like Randal, whom the example of the playground at
Eton had not served to correct of the arid self-seeking, which looked
to knowledge for no object but power. A man tempted by passions like
Audley, or seduced into fraud b