“You are really to be envied, Mrs Mildred, with your cultivated tastes and many acquirements.  You can comply with every wish of your elegant and well-informed mind.  There is no barrier between you and a life of high mental enjoyment.  The source of half my happiness was cut off when I exchanged my study for the desk.  Men cease to live when what is falsely called life begins with them.”

“We have all our work to do, and we should do it cheerfully.  It is a lesson taught me by my mother, and experience has shown it to be just.”

“Yes, madam, I grant you when your mother spoke.  But it is not so now.  Mercantile occupation in England is not as it has been.  I question whether it will ever be again.  It is not closely and essentially associated, as it was of yore, with high principle and strict notions of honour.  The simple word of the English merchant has ceased to pass current through the world, sacred as his oath—­more binding than his bond; fair, manly dealing is at an end; and he who would mount the ladder of fortune, must be prepared to soil his hands if he hope to reach the top.  Legitimate trading is no longer profitable.  Selfishness is arrayed against selfishness—­cunning against cunning—­lying against lying—­deception against deception.  The great rogue prospers—­the honest man starves with his innate sense of honour and integrity.  Is it possible to enter cheerfully upon employment which demands the sacrifice of soul even at the outset?”

“You draw a dark picture, Mr Allcraft, slightly tinged, I trust, with the poetic pencil.  But be it as gloomy as you paint it, we have still religion amongst us, and individuals who adapt their conduct to its principles”—­

“Ay, madam,” said Michael, quickly interrupting her, “I grant you all you wish.  If we did but adapt our conduct to the doctrines of the Testament—­to that unequalled humanizing moral code—­if we were taught to do this, and how to do it, we might hope for some amendment.  But look at the actual state of things.  The religious world is but a portion of the whole—­a world within a world.  Preachers of peace—­men who arrogate to themselves the divine right of inculcating truth, and who, if any, should be free from the corruption that taints the social atmosphere,—­such men come before mankind already sick with warfare, widening the breaches, subdividing our divisions.  Are these men pure and single-minded?  Are these men free from the grasping itch that distinguishes our age?  Is there no such thing as trafficking with souls?  Are chapels bought and sold only with a spiritual view, or sometimes as men bargain for their theatres?  Are these men really messengers of peace, living in amity and union, acting Christianity as well as preaching it?  Ask the Papist, the Protestant, the Independent, and the thousand sects who dwell apart as foes, and, whilst they talk of love, are teaching mankind how to hate beneath the garb of sanctimoniousness and hollow forms!”