The Devil's Advocate

by Percy Greg

General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1878 Original Publisher: Trbner Subjects: Fiction / General Fiction / Classics Fiction / Historical Fiction / Literary Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER XIV. BEHIND THE VEIL! All of us were for some time nearly silent, enjoying the exquisite beauty of the summer morning. We were presently joined by a friend and neighbour of Cleveland's, somewhab older than any of ourselves, who had spent great part of his youth and manhood as an active teacher of what was then called Secularism or Freethink- ing. Of late, however, he had retired from political and theological controversy, and settled himself alone in a tiny cottage among the Cumberland hills. He justified his withdrawal from the strife chiefly on the ground that the work which he considered essential was accomplished; that thought -- which in his earlier days had been fettered not only by social persecution but by actual legal penalties -- was now as free as even he could wish to see it. Perhaps, however, he was unconsciously influenced yet more powerfully by the low character, ignorance, and vulgarity of those who had succeeded himself and his former chief in the leadership of the movement in whose front rank he had once held no mean place. When Francis Sterne had been introduced to Dalway and myself, the conversation gradually relapsed almost into its former groove. " I am not," said Cleveland, " given to admire or evenStolen Phraseology of Nihilism. 101 to tolerate that pseudo-religious sentimentality -with.) which so much of the Materialism of this age is tinged. There is nothing I abhor more thoroughly or despise more heartily than the tendency shown by several writers, ...

172 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2007

About the author

Percy Greg (1836, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk - 24 December 1889, Chelsea), son of William Rathbone Greg, was an English writer.

Percy Greg, like his father, wrote about politics, but his views were violently reactionary: his History of the United States to the Reconstruction of the Union (1887) can be said to be more of a polemic, rather than a history.

His Across The Zodiac (1880) is an early science fiction novel, said to be the progenitor of the sword-and-planet genre.