Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/74

 and Trollope in conventional imitation of the old school speak of castigating vice, but they also in other places join the universal chorus against folly, and folly as an impostor.

Disraeli comes in on this:

"Teach us that pretension is a bore. * * * Catch the fleeting colors of that sly chameleon, Cant, and show what excessive trouble we are ever taking to make ourselves miserable and silly."

Reade adds a word:

"Self-deception will probably cease with the first blast of the archangel's trumpet; but what human heart will part with it till then?"

morbid visionaries, romantic enthusiasts, lovers of music, lovers of the picturesque, and lovers of good dinners, march, and will march forever, pari passu, with the march of mechanics which some facetiously call the march of intellect. imposing as ever; * * * and political mountebanks continue, and will continue, to puff nostrums and practice legerdemain under the eyes of the multitude; following * * * a course as tortuous as that of a river, but in a reverse process: beginning by being dark and deep, and ending by being transparent." 46-7.
 * [Footnote: *talists, political economists, theorists in all sciences, projectors in all arts,
 * * * The array of false pretensions, moral, political, and literary, is as

His motto for Crochet Castle is:

"De monde est plein de fous, et qui n'en veut pas voir, Doit se tenir tout seul, et casser son miroir." ]