t) that 'Falstaff is only to us an incorrigible fat man.' I want
to know what he illustrates. And Don Quixote--what end can be served in
making a noble mind ridiculous?--I hear you say--practical. So it is. We
are very narrow, I know. But we like wit--practical again! Or in your
words (when I really think they generally come to my aid--perhaps it is
that it is often all your thought); we 'prefer the rapier thrust, to the
broad embrace, of Intelligence.'"

He trifled with the letter for some time, re-reading chosen passages as
he walked about the room, and considering he scarce knew what. There are
ideas language is too gross for, and shape too arbitrary, which come to
us and have a definite influence upon us, and yet we cannot fasten on the
filmy things and make them visible and distinct to ourselves, much less
to others. Why did he twice throw a look into the glass in the act of
passing it? He stood for a moment with head erect facing it. His eyes for
the nonce seemed little to peruse his outer features; the grey gathered
brows, and the wrinkles much action of them had traced over the circles
half up his high straight forehead; the iron-grey hair that rose over his
forehead and fell away in the fashion of Richard's plume. His general
appearance showed the tints of years; but none of their weight, and
nothing of the dignity of his youth, was gone. It was so far
satisfactory, but his eyes were wide, as one who looks at his essential
self through the mask we wear.

Perhaps he was speculating as he looked on the sort of aspect he
presented to the lady's discriminative regard. Of her feelings he had not
a suspicion. But he knew with what extraordinary lucidity women can, when
it pleases them, and when their feelings are not quite boiling under the
noonday sun, seize all the sides of a character, and put their fingers on
its weak point. He was cognizant of the total absence of the humorous in
himself (the want that most shut him out from his fellows), and perhaps
the clear-thoughted, intensely self-examining gentleman filmily
conceived, Me also, in common with the poet, she gazes on as one of the
superior--grey beasts!

He may have so conceived the case; he was capable of that
great-mindedness, and could snatch at times very luminous glances at the
broad reflector which the world of fact lying outside our narrow compass
holds up for us to see ourselves in when we will. Unhappily, the faculty
of laughter, which is due to th