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274 the weak hands of the Gods, was not their success insured? So Dr. Grantly had girded up his loins and marched up to the fight, almost regretting that the triumph would be so easy. The subsequent failure was very trying to his temper as a party man.

It always strikes me that the supporters of the Titans are in this respect much to be pitied. The Giants themselves—those who are actually handling Pelion, and breaking their shins over the lower rocks of Ossa, are always advancing in some sort toward the councils of Olympus. Their highest policy is to snatch some ray from heaven. Why else put Pelion on Ossa, unless it be that a furtive hand, making its way through Jove's windows, may pluck forth a thunderbolt or two, or some article less destructive, but of manufacture equally divine? And in this consists the wisdom of the higher Giants—that, in spite of their mundane antecedents, theories, and predilections, they can see that articles of divine manufacture are necessary. But then they never carry their supporters with them. Their whole army is an army of martyrs. "For twenty years I have stuck to them, and see how they have treated me!" Is not that always the plaint of an old giant-slave? "I have been true to my party all my life, and where am I now?" he says. Where, indeed, my friend? Looking all about you, you begin to learn that you can not describe your whereabouts. I do not marvel at that. No one finds himself planted at last in so terribly foul a morass as he would fain stand still forever on dry ground.

Dr. Grantly was disgusted; and, although he was himself too true and thorough in all his feelings to be able to say aloud that any Giant was wrong, still he had a sad feeling within his heart that the world was sinking from under him. He was still sufficiently exoteric to think that a good stand-up fight in a good cause was a good thing. No doubt he did wish to be Bishop of Westminster, and was anxious to compass that preferment by any means that might appear to him to be fair. And why not? But this was not the end of his aspirations. He wished that the Giants might prevail in every thing—in bishoprics as in all other matters; and he could not understand that they should give way on the very first appearance of a skirmish. In his open talk he was loud against many a god, but in his heart of hearts he was bitter enough against both Porphyrion and Orion.