at, as you
are aware, he hates a compromise--won't have it--retro Sathanas! and
Drew's proposal to take his arm instead of being carried pickaback
disgusts old Nevil. Still it won't do to stop where they are, like the
cocoa-nut and the pincushion of our friends, the gipsies, on the downs:
so they take arms and commence the journey home, resembling the best of
friends on the evening of a holiday in our native clime--two steps to the
right, half-a-dozen to the left, etcaetera.'

Thus, with scarce a variation from the facts, with but a flowery chaplet
cast on a truthful narrative, as it were, Captain Baskelett could render
ludicrous that which in other quarters had obtained honourable mention.
Nevil and Drew being knocked down by the wind of a ball near the battery,
'Confound it!' cries Nevil, jumping on his feet, 'it's because I
consented to a compromise!'--a transparent piece of fiction this, but so
in harmony with the character stripped naked for us that it is accepted.
Imagine Nevil's love-affair in such hands! Recovering from a fever, Nevil
sees a pretty French girl in a gondola, and immediately thinks, 'By
jingo, I'm marriageable.' He hears she is engaged. 'By jingo, she's
marriageable too.' He goes through a sum in addition, and the total is a
couple; so he determines on a marriage. 'You can't get it out of his
head; he must be married instantly, and to her, because she is going to
marry somebody else. Sticks to her, follows her, will have her, in spite
of her father, her marquis, her brother, aunts, cousins, religion,
country, and the young woman herself. I assure you, a perfect model of
male fidelity! She is married. He is on her track. He knows his time will
come; he has only to be handy. You see, old Nevil believes in Providence,
is perfectly sure he will one day hear it cry out, "Where's
Beauchamp?"--"Here I am!"--"And here's your marquise!"--"I knew I should
have her at last," says Nevil, calm as Mont Blanc on a reduced scale.'

The secret of Captain Baskelett's art would seem to be to show the
automatic human creature at loggerheads with a necessity that winks at
remarkable pretensions, while condemning it perpetually to doll-like
action. You look on men from your own elevation as upon a quantity of our
little wooden images, unto whom you affix puny characteristics, under
restrictions from which they shall not escape, though they attempt it
with the enterprising vigour of an extended leg, or a pair of raised