Page:Yeast. A Problem - Kingsley (1851).djvu/118

'With young Lord Vieuxbois, among high art and painted glass, spade farms, and model smell-traps, rubricalities and sanitary reforms, and all other inventions, possible and impossible, for 'stretching the old formula to meet the new fact,' as your favourite prophet says.'

'Till the old formula cracks under the tension.'

'And cracks its devotees, too, I think. Here comes the cider!'

'But my dear fellow, you must not laugh at all this. Young England or Peelite, this is all right and noble. What a yet unspoken poetry there is in that very sanitary reform! It is the great fact of the age. We shall have men arise and write epics on it, when they have learnt that 'to the pure all things are pure,' and that science and usefulness contain a divine element, even in their lowest appliances.'

'Write one yourself, and call it the Chadwickiad.'

'Why not?

There's a beginning at once. Why don't you rather, with your practical power, turn sanitary reformer—the only true soldier—and conquer those real devils and 'natural enemies' of Englishmen, carbonic acid and sulpuretted hydrogen?'

'Ce n'est pas mon métier, my dear fellow. I am miserably behind the age. People are getting so cursedly in earnest now-a-days, that I shall have to bolt to the backwoods to amuse myself in peace; or