, ain't it! No, sir! That sort of talk will do well
enough for my Lord Minchampstead, sir, the old money-lending Jew! ----
but gentlemen, sir, gentlemen, that are half-ruined with free trade,
and your Whig policy, sir, you must give 'em back their rights before
they can afford to throw away their money on cottages. Cottages,
indeed! ---- upstart of a cotton-spinner, coming down here, buying
the lands over our heads, and pretends to show us how to manage our
estates; old families that have been in the county this four hundred
years, with the finest peasantry in the world ready to die for them,
sir, till these new revolutionary doctrines came in--Pride and
purse-proud conceit, just to show off his money! What do they want
with better cottages than their fathers had? Only put notions into
their heads, raise 'em above their station; more they have, more
they'll want. ---- sir, make chartists of 'em all before he's done!
I'll tell you what, sir,"--and Mr. Trebooze attempted a dignified and
dogmatic tone--"I never told it you before, because you were my very
good friend, sir: but my opinion is, sir, that by what you're doing
up at Pentremochyn, you're just spreading chartism--chartism, sir! Of
course I know nothing. Of course I'm nobody, in these days: but that's
my opinion, sir, and you've got it!"

By which motion Tom took little. Mighty is envy always, and mighty
ignorance: but you become aware of their truly Titanic grandeur only
when you attempt to touch their owner's pocket.

Tom tried old Heale: but took as little in that quarter. Heale had
heard of sanitary reform, of course; but he knew nothing about it, and
gave a general assent to Tom's doctrines, for fear of exposing his own
ignorance: acting on them was a very different matter. It is always
hard for an old medical man to confess that anything has been
discovered since the days of his youth; and beside, there were other
reasons behind, which Heale tried to avoid giving; and therefore
fenced off, and fenced off, till, pressed hard by Tom, wrath came
forth, and truth with it.

"And what be you thinking of, sir, to expect me to offend all my best
patients? and not one of 'em but rents some two cottages, some a
dozen. And what'll they say to me if I go a routing and rookling in
their drains, like an old sow by the wayside, beside putting 'em to
all manner of expense? And all on the chance of this cholera coming,
which I have no faith in, nor in this new-fangled san