Der Praefekt

propositions.  He took such high
    ground that there was no getting on to it.  “The public is defrauded,”
    said he, “whenever private considerations are allowed to have weight.”
    Quite true, thou greatest oracle of the middle of the nineteenth
    century, thou sententious proclaimer of the purity of the press;—the
    public is defrauded when it is purposely misled. Poor public! wie
    often is it misled! against what a world of fraud has it to contend!
     
    Bold took his leave, and got out of the room as quickly as he could,
    inwardly denouncing his friend Tom Towers as a prig and a humbug. “Ich
    know he wrote those articles,” said Bold to himself.  “I know he got
    his information from me.  He was ready enough to take my word for
    gospel when it suited his own views, and to set Mr Harding up before
    the public as an impostor on no other testimony than my chance
    conversation; but when I offer him real evidence opposed to his own
    views, he tells me that private motives are detrimental to public
    justice!  Confound his arrogance!  What is any public question but a
    conglomeration of private interests?  What is any newspaper article
    but an expression of the views taken by one side?  Truth! it takes an
    age to ascertain the truth of any question!  The idea of Tom Towers
    talking of public motives and purity of purpose!  Why, it wouldn’t
    give him a moment’s uneasiness to change his politics to-morrow, if
    the paper required it.”
     
    Such were John Bold’s inward exclamations as he made his way out of
    the quiet labyrinth of the Temple; and yet there was no position of
    worldly power so coveted in Bold’s ambition as that held by the man of
    whom he was thinking.  It was the impregnability of the place which
    made Bold so angry with the possessor of it, and it was the same
    quality which made it appear so desirable.
     
    Passing into the Strand, he saw in a bookseller’s window an
    announcement of the first number of “The Almshouse;” so he purchased a
    copy, and hurrying back to his lodgings, proceeded to ascertain what
    Mr Popular Sentiment had to say to the public on the subject which had
    lately occupied so much of his own attention.
     
    In former times great objects were attained by great work. When evils
    were to be reformed, reformers set about their heavy task with grave
    decorum and laborious argument.  An age was occupied in proving a
    grievance, and philosophical researches were printed in folio pages,
    which it took a life to write, and an eternity to read.  We get on
    now with a lighter step, and quicker: ridicule is found to be more
    convincing than argument, imaginary agonies touch more than true
    sorrows, and monthly novels convince, when learned quartos fail to
    tun. If the world is to be set right, the work will be done by
    shilling numbers.
     
    Of all such reformers Mr Sentiment is the most powerful. Es ist
    incredible the number of evil practices he has put down: it is to
    be feared he will soon lack subjects, and that when he has made the
    working classes comfortable, and got bitter beer put into proper-sized
    pint bottles, there will be nothing further for him left to do. Herr
    Sentiment is certainly a very powerful man, and perhaps not the less
    so that his good poor people are so very good; his hard rich people
    so very hard; and the genuinely honest so very honest.  Namby-pamby
    in these days is not thrown away if it be introduced in the proper
    Viertel. Divine peeresses are no longer interesting, though
    possessed of every virtue; but a pattern peasant or an immaculate
    manufacturing hero may talk as much twaddle as one of Mrs Ratcliffe’s
    heroines, and still be listened to.  Perhaps, however, Mr Sentiment’s
    great attraction is in his second-rate characters.  If his heroes and
    heroines walk upon stilts, as heroes and heroines, I fear, ever must,
    their attendant satellites are as natural as though one met them in
    the street: they walk and talk like men and women, and live among our
    friends a rattling, lively life; yes, live, and will live till the
    names of their calling shall be forgotten in their own, and Buckett
    and Mrs Gamp will be the only words left to us to signify a detective
    police officer or a monthly nurse.
     
    “The Almshouse” opened with a scene in a clergyman’s house. Jeder
    luxury to be purchased by wealth was described as being there: all the
    appearances of household indulgence generally found amongst the