I abstain from conjectural vilification of my opponents during the present parliamentary session, and I am very sure that I shall be less injurious to my contemporaries.  On the whole, and in the vast majority of instances, the action by which we can do the best for future ages is of the sort which has a certain beneficence and grace for contemporaries.  A sour father may reform prisons, but considered in his sourness he does harm.  The deed of Judas has been attributed to far-reaching views, and the wish to hasten his Master’s declaration of himself as the Messiah.  Perhaps—­I will not maintain the contrary—­Judas represented his motive in this way, and felt justified in his traitorous kiss; but my belief that he deserved, metaphorically speaking, to be where Dante saw him, at the bottom of the Malebolge, would not be the less strong because he was not convinced that his action was detestable.  I refuse to accept a man who has the stomach for such treachery, as a hero impatient for the redemption of mankind and for the beginning of a reign when the kisses shall be those of peace and righteousness.

All this is by the way, to show that my apology for Mordax was not founded on his persuasion of superiority in his own motives, but on the compatibility of unfair, equivocal, and even cruel actions with a nature which, apart from special temptations, is kindly and generous; and also to enforce the need of checks from a fellow-feeling with those whom our acts immediately (not distantly) concern.  Will any one be so hardy as to maintain that an otherwise worthy man cannot be vain and arrogant?  I think most of us have some interest in arguing the contrary.  And it is of the nature of vanity and arrogance, if unchecked, to become cruel and self-justifying.  There are fierce beasts within:  chain them, chain them, and let them learn to cower before the creature with wider reason.  This is what one wishes for Mordax—­that his heart and brain should restrain the outleap of roar and talons.

As to his unwillingness to admit that an idea which he has not discovered is novel to him, one is surprised that quick intellect and shrewd observation do not early gather reasons for being ashamed of a mental trick which makes one among the comic parts of that various actor Conceited Ignorance.

I have a sort of valet and factotum, an excellent, respectable servant, whose spelling is so unvitiated by non-phonetic superfluities that he writes night as nit.  One day, looking over his accounts, I said to him jocosely, “You are in the latest fashion with your spelling, Pummel:  most people spell “night” with a gh between the i and the t, but the greatest scholars now spell it as you do.”  “So I suppose, sir,” says Pummel; “I’ve see it with a gh, but I’ve noways give into that myself.”  You would never catch Pummel in an interjection of surprise.  I have sometimes laid traps for his astonishment, but he has escaped