will poison your very vitals!"

"Indeed, sir, it will never go deep enough for that! But it came near
touching them as I sat eating my bread and cheese."

"He's an infidel!" said the minister fiercely.

"A kind of one," returned Donal, "but not of the worst sort. It's the
people who call themselves believers that drive the like of poor
Shelley to the mouth of the pit."

"He hated the truth," said the minister.

"He was always seeking after it," said Donal, "though to be sure he
didn't get to the end of the search. Just listen to this, sir, and say
whether it be very far from Christian."

Donal opened his little volume, and sought his passage. The minister
but for curiosity and the dread of seeming absurd would have stopped
his ears and refused to listen. He was a man of not merely dry or
stale, but of deadly doctrines. He would have a man love Christ for
protecting him from God, not for leading him to God in whom alone is
bliss, out of whom all is darkness and misery. He had not a glimmer of
the truth that eternal life is to know God. He imagined justice and
love dwelling in eternal opposition in the bosom of eternal unity. He
knew next to nothing about God, and misrepresented him hideously. If
God were such as he showed him, it would be the worst possible
misfortune to have been created.

Donal had found the passage. It was in The Mask of Anarchy. He read
the following stanzas:--

Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free.

Be your strong and simple words
Keen to wound as sharpened swords,
And wide as targes let them be,
With their shade to cover ye.

And if then the tyrants dare,
Let them ride among you there,
Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew--
What they like, that let them do.

With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise,
Look upon them as they slay,
Till their rage has died away.

And that slaughter to the Nation
Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular--
A volcano heard afar.

Ending, the reader turned to the listener. But the listener had
understood little of the meaning, and less of the spirit. He hated
opposition to the powers on the part of any below himself, yet scorned
the idea of submitting to persecution.

"What think you of that, sir?" asked Donal.

"Sheer non