Page:Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.djvu/306

290 is all that can be known. He has to learn that our knowledge, also, is power; and that we know how to use it too.

Lord Flumm. There, Lady Selina, so much for your philosophic friend. Poor Turnstile! What a business he has made of it. Here is the "Times," with the report of the Shoreditch election meeting. Turnstile has no chance. The Scotchmen coalesce; Highway none of us can think of; and Smooth and MacLeech walk over the ground in triumph: and then, the Presidency of Manufactures, the very appointment for which poor Turnstile was fitted (and, to do the poor devil justice, he could have filled it well), is given to MacLeech, a Scotch hanger on, or distant cousin of Smooth's, and with the old salary, in spite of all that Hume could say against it.—Bravo! Reform, and the Whigs for ever!—We Tories could not have done the business in a better style.

Footman. Mr. Turnstile, my Lady, sends up his card.

Lady Flumm. Oh, not at home! And Sleek, put a memorandum in the visiting-book, that we are "out of town," whenever Mr. Turnstile calls.

Turnstile. Then all is up. What a fool have I been to embark upon this sea of trouble! Two years of trifling and lost time; while others have been making discoveries and adding to their reputation. Those rascal Whigs, my blood boils to think of them. I can forgive the Shoreditch people—the