the reform and progress of custom itself, which, without such questioning, would remain absolutely stationary and irresistibly despotic. You rebels against the established custom have your place in the great work of progressive civilization. Without you Western Europe would have s been a second China. It is to the continual rebellion of such persons as yourself that we owe whatever progress has been accomplished since the times of our remotest forefathers. There have been rebels always, and the rebels have not been, generally speaking, the most stu-10 pid part of the nation.

But what is the use of wasting this beneficial power of rebellion on matters too trivial to be worth attention? Does it hurt your conscience to appear in a dress-coat? Certainly not, and you would be as good-15 looking in it as you are in your velveteen shooting-jacket with the pointers on the bronze buttons. Let us conform in these trivial matters, which nobody except a tailor ought to consider worth a moment's attention, in order to reserve our strength for the protection of intel-20 lectual liberty. Let society arrange your dress for you (it will save you infinite trouble), but never permit it to stifle the expression of your thought. You find it convenient, because you are timid, to exclude yourself from the world by refusing to wear its costume; but a bolder 25 man would let the tailor do his worst, and then go into the world and courageously defend there the persons and causes that are misunderstood and slanderously misrepresented. The fables of Spenser are fables only in form, and a noble knight may at any time go forth, 30 armed in the panoply of a tail-coat, a dress-waistcoat, and a manly moral courage, to do battle across the dinner-table and in the drawing-room for those who have none to defend them.

The great duty of the intellectual class, and its especial function, is to confirm what is reasonable in the customs that have been handed down to us, and so maintain their authority, yet at the same time to show that custom is not final, but merely a form suited to the world's con- 5 venience. And, whenever you are convinced that a custom is no longer serviceable, the way to procure the abolition of it is to lead men very gradually away from it, by offering a substitute at first very slightly different from what they have been long used to. If the English 10 had been in the habit of tattooing, the best way to procure its abolition would have been to admit that it was quite necessary to cover the face with elaborate patterns, yet gently to suggest that these patterns would be still more elegant if delicately painted in water-colors. Then 15 you might have gone on arguing—still admitting, of course, the absolute necessity for ornament of some kind-that good taste demanded only a moderate amount of it; and so you would have brought people gradually to a little flourish on the nose or forehead, 20 when the most advanced reformers might have set the example of dispensing with ornament altogether. Many of our contemporaries have abandoned shaving in this gradual way, allowing the whiskers to encroach imperceptibly, till at last the razor lay in the dressing-case 25 unused. The abominable black cylinders that covered our heads a few years ago were vainly resisted by radicals in costume, but the moderate reformers gradually reduced their elevation, and now they are things of the past.

Though I think we ought to submit to custom in matters of indifference, and to reform it gradually, while affecting submission in matters not altogether indifferent, still there are other matters on which the only

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attitude worthy of a man is the most bold and open resistance to its dictates. Custom may have a right to authority over your wardrobe, but it cannot have any right to ruin your self-respect. Not only the virtues most advantageous to well-being, but also the most con- s temptible and degrading vices, have at various periods of the world's history been sustained by the full authority of custom. There are places where, forty years ago, drunkenness was conformity to custom, and sobriety an eccentricity. There are communities (it cannot be nec-10 essary to name them) in which successful fraud, especially on a large scale, is respected as the proof of smartness, while a man who remains poor because he is honest is despised for slowness and incapacity. There are whole nations in which religious hypocrisy is strongly approved by custom, and honesty severely condemned. The Wahabee Arabs may be mentioned as an instance of this, but the Wahabee Arabs are not the only people, nor is Nejed the only place, where it is held to be more virtuous to lie on the side of custom than to be an hon-20 orable man in independence of it. In all communities where vice and hypocrisy are sustained by the authority of custom, eccentricity is a moral duty. In all communities where a low standard of thinking is received as infallible common-sense, eccentricity becomes an intel-25 lectual duty. There are hundreds of places in the provinces where it is impossible for any man to lead the intellectual life without being condemned as an eccentric. It is the duty of intellectual men who are thus isolated to set the example of that which their neighbors call 30 eccentricity, but which may be more accurately described as superiority.

XXXIII.

MRS. POYSER AND THE SQUIRE.

BY GEORGE ELIOT.1

"Ан, now this I like," said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round at the damp temple of cleanliness, but keeping near the door. "I'm sure I should like my breakfast better if I knew the butter and cream came from this dairy. Thank you, that really is a pleasant sight. Un-5 fortunately, my slight tendency to rheumatism makes me afraid of damp; I'll sit down in your comfortable kitchen. Ah, Poyser, how do you do? In the midst of business, I see, as usual. I've been looking at your wife's beautiful dairy-the best manager in the parish, is she 10 not?"

Mr. Poyser had just entered in shirt-sleeves and open waistcoat, with a face a shade redder than usual from the exertion of "pitching." As he stood-red, rotund, and radiant before the small, wiry, cool old gentleman 15 --he looked like a prize apple by the side of a withered crab.2

"Will you please to take this chair, sir?" he said, lifting his father's arm-chair forward a little; "you'll find it easy."

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"No, thank you, I never sit in easy-chairs," said the old gentleman, seating himself on a small chair near the door. "Do you know, Mrs. Poyser-sit down, pray, both of you-I've been far from contented for some time with Mrs. Satchell's dairy management. I think 25 she has not a good method, as you have."

“Indeed, sir, I can't speak to that," said Mrs. Poyser, in a hard voice, rolling and unrolling her knitting, and looking icily out of the window, as she continued to stand opposite the Squire. Poyser might sit down if he liked, she thought: she wasn't going to sit down; as if she'd give in to any such smooth-tongued palaver. Mr. Poyser, who looked and felt the reverse of icy, did sit down in his three-cornered chair.

"And now, Poyser, as Satchell is laid up, I am intending to let the Chase Farm to a respectable tenant. I'm 10 tired of having a farm on my own hands—nothing is made the best of in such cases, as you know. A satisfactory bailiff is hard to find; and I think you and I, Poyser, and your excellent wife here, can enter into a little arrangement in consequence, which will be to our 15 mutual advantage.”

"Oh," said Mr. Poyser, with a good-natured blankness of imagination as to the nature of the arrange

ment.

"If I'm called upon to speak, sir," said Mrs. Poyser, 20 after glancing at her husband with pity at his softness, "you know better than me; but I don't see what the Chase Farm is t' us-we've cumber enough wi' our own farm. Not but what I'm glad to hear o' anybody respectable coming into the parish; there's some as ha’2 been brought in as hasn't been looked on i' that character."

"You're likely to find Mr. Thurle an excellent neighbor, I assure you; such a one as you will feel glad to have accommodated by the little plan I'm going to men-30 tion, especially as I hope you will find it as much to your own advantage as his."

"Indeed, sir, if it's anything t' our advantage, it'll be the first offer o' the sort I've heared on. It's them as