Page:Crotchet Castle - Peacock (1831).djvu/182

 classes of society, combined by gunpowder, steam, and fiscality, which has brought them to that dismal degradation in which we see them now. And there are the people of the twelfth century.

As to your king, the enchanter has done him ample justice, even in your own view. As to your lords and their ladies, he has drawn them too favorably, given them too many of the false colors of chivalry, thrown too attractive a light on their abominable doings. As to the people, he keeps them so much in the background, that he can hardly be said to have represented them at all, much less misrepresented them, which indeed he could scarcely do, seeing that, by your own showing, they were all thieves, ready to knock down any man for what they could not come by honestly.