There is at times in the hearts of all men of active life a vivid wild moment or two of dramatic dialogue between the veteran antagonists, Nature and Circumstance, when they, whose business it should be to be joyfully one, furiously split; and the Dame is up with her shrillest querulousness to inquire of her offspring, for the distinct original motive of his conduct.  Why did he bring her to such a pass!  And what is the gain?  If he be not an alienated issue of the great Mother, he will strongly incline to her view, that he put himself into harness to join with a machine going the dead contrary way of her welfare; and thereby wrote himself donkey, for his present reading.  Soldiers, heroes, even the braided, even the wearers of the gay cock’s feathers, who get the honours and the pocket-pieces, know the moment of her electrical eloquence.  They have no answer for her, save an index at the machine pushing them on yet farther under the enemy’s line of fire, where they pluck the golden wreath or the livid, and in either case listen no more.  They glorify her topping wisdom while on the march to confound it.  She is wise in her way.  But, it is asked by the disputant, If we had followed her exclusively, how far should we have travelled from our starting-point?  We of the world and its prizes and duties must do her an injury to make her tongue musical to us, and her argument worthy of attention.  So it seems.  How to keep the proper balance between those two testy old wranglers, that rarely pull the right way together, is as much the task for men in the grip of the world, as for the wanton youthful fry under dominion of their instincts; and probably, when it is done, man will have attained the golden age of his retirement from service.

Why be scheming?  Victor asked.  Unlike the gallant soldiery, his question was raised in the blush of a success, from an examination of the quality of the thing won; although it had not changed since it was first coveted; it was demonstrably the same:  and an astonishing dry stick he held, as a reward for perpetual agitations and perversions of his natural tastes.  Here was a Dudley Sowerby, the direct issue of the conception of Lakelands; if indeed they were not conceived together in one; and the young gentleman had moral character, good citizen substance, and station, rank, prospect of a title; and the grasp of him was firm.  Yet so far was it from hearty, that when hearing a professed satirist like Colney Durance remark on the decorous manner of Dudley’s transparent courtship of the girl, under his look of an awakened approval of himself, that he appeared to be asking everybody:—­Do you not think I bid fair for an excellent father of Philistines?—­Victor had a nip of spite at the thought of Dudley’s dragging him bodily to be the grandfather.  Poor Fredi, too!—­necessarily the mother:  condemned by her hard fate to feel proud of Philistine babies!  Though women soon get reconciled to it!  Or do they?  They did once.  What if his Fredi turned out one of the modern young women, who have drunk of ideas?  He caught himself speculating on that, as on a danger.  The alliance with Dudley really seemed to set him facing backward.