if its employment elsewhere were the monster iniquity it was shown to be.  That philosophical friend of humanity, Mr. Stellato, began to denounce the consumers of animal food with every unpleasant illustration the shambles could be made to supply.  In very select companies of sympathizers, as well as in the Graduating Circle of Progressive Gladiators, it was known that Mrs. Romulus maintained a hideous doctrine subversive of that sacrament of the family which raises the life of man above the life of the wolf and ape.

Yet of the views and endeavors of the great mass of these earnest people we may speak only with honor and gratitude.  Much good work done in that distant year of grace remains with us to-day.  Who is more practical than the idealist?  If I read history aright, it is only the white-heat of fanaticism which brands a true word into the tough hide of society.  A supreme pursuit of one virtue by the few can alone neutralize a supreme devotion by the many to the opposite vice.  Let us rejoice that some men and women are under the necessity of thinking no good thought which they do not attempt to utilize at all hazards.  Also, it is well not to repine overmuch because many conscientious citizens cannot induce a concentration of vision which directs all feeling, hissing-hot, into one channel.  They save us from the intolerable monotony of a whole world of heroes, and leave you and me, good reader, in blessed freedom to demand the theoretically right and ignore the practically expedient.

To the beginnings of this angry perturbation the Reverend Charles Clifton had returned, after abandoning the Vannelle manuscript under circumstances detailed in the last number of this magazine.  To one in his position of mind it was of the highest importance to come upon some work that he was fitted to do.  It was his unhappy destiny to be placed just where such power as he had could accomplish nothing.  Timid by nature, a cautious lover of compromise, self-baffled in a brilliant flutter for truth, what had he to do in a vulgar conflict of opinion, in a common, healthy play of free thought and speech?  Peering off into immensity until he had become utterly adrift in theology, the minister found himself too feeble to stand upon the moral basis of some practical creed.  His regular parish duties afforded but slender occupation; he had the gift of speaking extemporaneously, or from such notes as might be made upon the back of a letter half an hour before church; he was not called upon to do more catechizing or visiting than was agreeable to his mood.  He accordingly yielded to an indolence of disposition which detained his vanishing illusions, and indulged in such studies as served to prolong the barren contemplation which had wasted his youth.  My knowledge of the secret committed for eighty years to the Mather Safe made me the only person to whom Clifton could freely write.  At some private inconvenience, I admitted a tolerably full intercourse with my new