He thanked God that he was not as those publicans at Somerset House, and took glory to himself in paying tithes of official cumin.
But now he was driven to a wider range.

Those higher Pharisees who were above him in his own pharisaical establishment, had interfered with the austerity of his worship.

He could not turn against them there, on their own ground.

He, of all men, could not be disobedient to official orders.

But if he could promote a movement beyond the walls of the Weights and Measures; if he could make Pharisees of those benighted publicans in the Strand; if he could introduce conic sections into the Custom House, and political economy into the Post Office; if, by any effort of his, the Foreign Office clerks could be forced to attend punctually at ten; and that wretched saunterer, whom five days a week he saw lounging into the Council Office--if he could be made to mend his pace, what a wide field for his ambition would Mr.Hardlines then have found! Great ideas opened themselves to his mind as he walked to and from his office daily.