Page:Yeast. A Problem - Kingsley (1851).djvu/83

 rowest and most exclusive of all parties. Really, before you ask me to hear the Church, I have a right to ask you to define what the Church is.'

'Our Articles define it,' said Argemone, drily.

'The Visible Church,' at least, it defines as a company of faithful men, in which,' &c. But how does it define the 'Invisible' one? And what does 'faithful' mean? What if I thought Cromwell and Pierre Leroux infinitely more faithful men in their way, and better members of the Invisible Church,' than the torturer-pedant Laud, or the facing-both-ways Protestant-Manichee Taylor?'

It was lucky for the life of young Love that the discussion went no further: Argemone was becoming scandalised beyond all measure. But, happily, the colonel interposed,—

'Look here, tell me if you know for whom this sketch is meant?'

'Tregarva, the keeper: who can doubt?' answered they both at once.

'Has not Mellot succeeded perfectly?'

'Yes,' said Lancelot. 'But what wonder, with such a noble subject! What a grand benevolence is enthroned on that lofty forehead!'

'Oh, you would say so, indeed,' interposed Honoria, 'if you knew him! The stories that I could tell you about him! How he will go into cottages, read to sick people by the hour, dress the children, cook their food for them, as tenderly as any woman! I found out, last winter, if you will believe it, that he lived on bread and water, to give out of his own