and not too much
wedded to the Church of England. I should have no doubt about it if
the voluntary principle were in vogue."

"A voluntary fiddlestick!"

"Well, even a voluntary fiddlestick--if it be voluntary and well
used."

"Of course you'll be a barrister. It is what you are cut out for, and
what you always intended."

"It is the most alluring trade going, I own;--but then they are all
such rogues. Of course you will be an exception."

"I shall do at Rome as Romans do--I hope always. My doctrine is, that
we have no immutable law of right and wrong."

"A very comfortable code. I wish I could share it."

"Well, you will some of these days; indeed, you do now practically.
But the subject is too long to talk of here. But as I know you won't
go into the church, I expect to see you settled in London before
Christmas."

"What am I to live on, my dear fellow?"

"Like all good nephews, live on your uncle. Besides, you will have
your fellowship; live on that, as I do."

"You have more than your fellowship; and as for my uncle, to tell you
the truth, I have no fancy for living on him. I am not quite sure
that he doesn't mean me to think that it's charity. However, I shall
have the matter out with him now."

"Have the matter out with him!--and charity! What an ass you are! An
uncle is just the same as a father."

"My uncle is not the same to me as my father."

"No; and by all accounts it's lucky for you that he is not. Stick to
your uncle, my dear fellow, and come up to London. The ball will be
at your foot."

"Did you ever read Marryat's novel, Harcourt?"

"What, Peter Simple?"

"No, that other one: I think of going out as another Japhet in search
of a father. I have a great anxiety to know what mine's like. It's
fourteen years now since I saw him."

"He is at Teheran, isn't he?"

"At Hong Kong, I think, just at present; but I might probably catch
him at Panama; he has something to do with the isthmus there."

"You wouldn't have half the chance that Japhet had, and would only
lose a great deal of time. Besides, if you talk of means, that would
want money."

They were now walking back towards Oxford, and had been talking about
fifty indifferent subjects, when Bertram again began.

"After all, there's only one decent career for a man in England."

"And what is the one decent career?"

"Politics and Parliament. It's all very well belonging to a free
nation, and ruling oneself, if one can be one of