One of Our Conquerors | Page 5

of a costlier mullet!
But is the Jew of the usury gold becoming our despot-king of
Commerce?
In that case, we do not ask our country's poets to compose a single
stanza of eulogy's rhymes--far from it. Far to the contrary, we bid
ourselves remember the sons of whom we are; instead of revelling in

the fruits of Commerce, we shoot scornfully past those blazing bellied
windows of the aromatic dinners, and beyond Thames, away to the
fishermen's deeps, Old England's native element, where the strenuous
ancestry of a race yet and ever manful at the stress of trial are heard
around and aloft whistling us back to the splendid strain of muscle, and
spray fringes cloud, and strong heart rides the briny scoops and hillocks,
and Death and Man are at grip for the haul.
There we find our nationality, our poetry, no Hebrew competing.
We do: or there at least we left it. Whether to recover it when wanted,
is not so certain. Humpy Hengist and dumpy Horsa, quitting ledger and
coronet, might recur to their sea bowlegs and red-stubble chins, might
take to their tarpaulins again; they might renew their manhood on the
capture of cod; headed by Harald and Hardiknut, they might roll surges
to whelm a Dominant Jew clean gone to the fleshpots and effeminacy.
Aldermen of our ancient conception, they may teach him that he has
been backsliding once more, and must repent in ashes, as those who are
for jewels, titles, essences, banquets, for wallowing in slimy spawn of
lucre, have ever to do. They dispossess him of his greedy gettings.
And how of the Law?
But the Law is always, and must ever be, the Law of the stronger.
--Ay, but brain beats muscle, and what if the Jew should prove to have
superior power of brain? A dreaded hypothesis! Why, then you see the
insurgent Saxon seamen (of the names in two syllables with accent on
the first), and their Danish captains, and it may be but a remnant of
high- nosed old Norman Lord de Warenne beside them, in the criminal
box: and presently the Jew smoking a giant regalia cigar on a balcony
giving view of a gallows-tree. But we will try that: on our side, to back
a native pugnacity, is morality, humanity, fraternity--nature's rights, aha!
and who withstands them? on his, a troop of mercenaries!
And that lands me in Red Republicanism, a hop and a skip from
Socialism! said Mr. Radnor, and chuckled ironically at the natural
declivity he had come to. Still, there was an idea in it . . . .

A short run or attempt at running after the idea, ended in pain to his
head near the spot where the haunting word punctilio caught at any
excuse for clamouring.
Yet we cannot relinquish an idea that was ours; we are vowed to the
pursuit of it. Mr. Radnor lighted on the tracks, by dint of a thought
flung at his partner Mr. Inchling's dread of the Jews. Inchling dreaded
Scotchmen as well, and Americans, and Armenians, and Greeks:
latterly Germans hardly less; but his dread of absorption in Jewry,
signifying subjection, had often precipitated a deplorable shrug, in
which Victor Radnor now perceived the skirts of his idea, even to a
fancy that something of the idea must have struck Inchling when he
shrugged: the idea being . . . he had lost it again. Definition seemed to
be an extirpation enemy of this idea, or she was by nature shy. She was
very feminine; coming when she willed and flying when wanted. Not
until nigh upon the close of his history did she return, full-statured and
embraceable, to Victor Radnor.

CHAPTER II
THROUGH THE VAGUE TO THE INFINITELY LITTLE
The fair dealing with readers demands of us, that a narrative shall not
proceed at slower pace than legs of a man in motion; and we are still
but little more than midway across London Bridge. But if a man's mind
is to be taken as a part of him, the likening of it, at an introduction, to
an army on the opening march of a great campaign, should plead
excuses for tardy forward movements, in consideration of the large
amount of matter you have to review before you can at all imagine
yourselves to have made his acquaintance. This it is not necessary to do
when you are set astride the enchanted horse of the Tale, which leaves
the man's mind at home while he performs the deeds befitting him: he
can indeed be rapid. Whether more active, is a question asking for your
notions of the governing element in the composition of man, and of hid
present business here. The Tale inspirits one's earlier ardours, when we
sped without baggage, when