Chapter 25 - Page 2

the idol of the
nobility and gentry; the work that is more in favour with people of
consequence in England than any other. Bishops are said to write for
it!"

"I know it is a work expressly established to sustain one of the most
factitious political systems that ever existed, and that it
sacrifices every high quality to attain its end."

"Mrs. Bloomfield, you amaze me! The first writers of Great Britain
figure in its pages."

"That I much question, in the first place; but even if it were so, it
would be but a shallow mystification. Although a man of character
might write one article in a work of this nature, it does not follow
that a man of no character does not write the next. The principles of
the communications of a periodical are as different as their
talents."

"But the editor is a pledge for all.--The editor of this review is an
eminent writer himself."

"An eminent writer may be a very great knave, in the first place, and
one fact is worth a thousand conjectures in such a matter. But we do
not know that there is any responsible editor to works of this nature
at all, for there is no name given in the title-page, and nothing is
more common than vague declarations of a want of this very
responsibility. But if I can prove to you that this article _cannot_
have been written by a man of common honesty, Mr. Howel, what will
you then say to the responsibility of your editor?"

"In that case I shall be compelled to admit that he had no connexion
with it."

"Any thing in preference to giving up the beloved idol!" said John
Effingham laughing. "Why not add at once, that he is as great a knave
as the writer himself? I am glad, however, that Tom Howel has fallen
into such good hands, Mrs. Bloomfield, and I devoutly pray you may
not spare him."

We have said that Mrs. Bloomfield had a rapid perception of things
and principles, that amounted almost to intuition. She had read the
article in question, and, as she glanced her eyes through its pages,
had detected its fallacies and falsehoods, in almost every sentence.
Indeed, they had not been put together with ordinary skill, the
writer having evidently presumed on the easiness of the class of
readers who generally swallowed his round assertions, and were so
clumsily done that any one who had not the faith to move mountains
would have seen through most of them without difficulty. But Mr.
Howel belonged to another school, and he was so much accustomed to
shut his eyes to palpable mystification mentioned by Mrs. Bloomfield,
that a lie, which, advanced in most works, would have carried no
weight with it, advanced in this particular