“The good sense of the people of England?” said the man in black, filling himself another glass.

“Yes,” said I; “the good sense of not only the upper, but the middle and lower classes.”

“And of what description of people are the upper class?” said the man in black, putting a lump of sugar into his gin and water.

“Very fine people,” said I, “monstrously fine people; so, at least, they are generally believed to be.”

“He! he!” said the man in black; “only those think them so who don’t know them.  The male part of the upper class are in youth a set of heartless profligates; in old age, a parcel of poor, shaking, nervous paillards.  The female part, worthy to be the sisters and wives of such wretches, unmarried, full of cold vice, kept under by vanity and ambition, but which, after marriage, they seek not to restrain; in old age, abandoned to vapours and horrors, do you think that such beings will afford any obstacle to the progress of the Church in these regions, as soon as her movements are unfettered?”

“I cannot give an opinion; I know nothing of them, except from a distance.  But what think you of the middle classes?”

“Their chief characteristic,” said the man in black, “is a rage for grandeur and gentility; and that same rage makes us quite sure of them in the long run.  Every thing that’s lofty meets their unqualified approbation; whilst everything humble, or, as they call it, ‘low,’ is scouted by them.  They begin to have a vague idea that the religion which they have hitherto professed is low; at any rate that it is not the religion of the mighty ones of the earth, of the great kings and emperors whose shoes they have a vast inclination to kiss, nor was used by the grand personages of whom they have read in their novels and romances, their Ivanhoes, their Marmions, and their Ladies of the Lake.”

“Do you think that the writings of Scott have had any influence in modifying their religious opinions?”

“Most certainly I do,” said the man in black.  “The writings of that man have made them greater fools than they were before.  All their conversation now is about gallant knights, princesses, and cavaliers, with which his pages are stuffed—­all of whom were Papists, or very high Church, which is nearly the same thing; and they are beginning to think that the religion of such nice sweet-scented gentry must be something very superfine.  Why, I know at Birmingham the daughter of an ironmonger, who screeches to the piano the Lady of the Lake’s hymn to the Virgin Mary, always weeps when Mary Queen of Scots is mentioned, and fasts on the anniversary of the death of that very wise martyr, Charles the First.  Why, I would engage to convert such an idiot to popery in a week, were it worth my trouble.  O Cavaliere Gualtiero, avete fatto molto in favore della Santa Sede!”

“If he has,” said I, “he has done it unwittingly; I never heard before that he was a favourer of the popish delusion.”