Page:Essays and phantasies by James Thomson.djvu/125

Rh Bumble is not malignant; he is King Log. But one thing he does hate—if an ecstasy of blind wrath and terror can be called hatred: this thing is a new idea, or even the semblance of a new idea such as a novel opinion. He abhors it as a bull or a quaker abhors scarlet, or a Calvinist the Scarlet Lady. And I hold that he is thoroughly justified in his abhorrence. Every new idea is a reproach and insult cast upon our old doctrines and institutions; and the sacred spirit of our old doctrines is Bumbleism; the most venerable of our old institutions is Bumbledom. Bumble is the very bull's-eye of the target against which new ideas rain bullets: and would you expect a living bull's-eye to love marksmen? If things as they immemorially have been and as they now are—our holy Church and noble State, as by law and the wisdom of our ancestors established—be worthy of the most reverent conservation; what pretence can there be for changing them by the application of new ideas? If you want variety (and were you a regular, consistent, well-principled character, you would not want variety), content yourself with dressing up the old ideas in new fashions, as you are fain to content yourself with dressing your own old body in occasionally new garments; do not sap the foundations of our prosperity and undermine the constitution of Bumbledom with new-fangled ideas. For ideas are most perilous things to handle; suddenly explosive as gunpowder and gun-cotton, no one is safe from being blown up by them, and Bumble is safe to be blown up by them: Guy Fawkes may go in fragments through the air, the Parliament Houses with king, bishops and nobles are sure to, if once the confounded train catches.