Page:Nightmare Abbey (1818).djvu/34

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NIGHTMARE ABBEY.
23

ings in his study, immersed in gloomy reverie, stalking about the room in his night-cap, which he pulled over his eyes like a cowl, and folding his striped calico dressing-gown about him like the mantle of a conspirator.

"Action,"—thus he soliloquised,—"is the result of opinion, and to new-model opinion would be to new-model society. Knowledge is power. It is in the hands of a few, who employ it to mislead the many for their own selfish purposes of aggrandisement and appropriation. What if it were in the hands of a few who should employ it to lead the many? What if it were universal, and the multitude were enlightened? No. The many must be always in leading-strings; but let them have wise and honest conductors. A few to think, and many to act: that is the only