blows on the window-sill at Vernon's refusal to take shelter
and rest. Vernon's excuse was that he had "no one but that fellow to
care for", and he strode off, naming a farm five miles distant. Dr.
Corney howled an invitation to early breakfast to him, in the event of
his passing on his way back, and retired to bed to think of him. The
result of a variety of conjectures caused him to set Vernon down as
Miss Middleton's knight, and he felt a strong compassion for his poor
friend. "Though," thought he, "a hopeless attachment is as pretty an
accompaniment to the tune of life as a gentleman might wish to have,
for it's one of those big doses of discord which make all the minor
ones fit in like an agreeable harmony, and so he shuffles along as
pleasantly as the fortune-favoured, when they come to compute!"

Sir Willoughby was the fortune-favoured in the little doctor's mind;
that high-stepping gentleman having wealth, and public consideration,
and the most ravishing young lady in the world for a bride. Still,
though he reckoned all these advantages enjoyed by Sir Willoughby at
their full value, he could imagine the ultimate balance of good fortune
to be in favour of Vernon. But to do so, he had to reduce the whole
calculation to the extreme abstract, and feed his lean friend, as it
were, on dew and roots; and the happy effect for Vernon lay in a
distant future, on the borders of old age, where he was to be blessed
with his lady's regretful preference, and rejoice in the fruits of good
constitutional habits. The reviewing mind was Irish. Sir Willoughby was
a character of man profoundly opposed to Dr. Corney's nature; the
latter's instincts bristled with antagonism--not to his race, for
Vernon was of the same race, partly of the same blood, and Corney loved
him: the type of person was the annoyance. And the circumstance of its
prevailing successfulness in the country where he was placed, while it
held him silent as if under a law, heaped stores of insurgency in the
Celtic bosom. Corney contemplating Sir Willoughby, and a trotting kern
governed by Strongbow, have a point of likeness between them; with the
point of difference, that Corney was enlightened to know of a friend
better adapted for eminent station, and especially better adapted to
please a lovely lady--could these high-bred Englishwomen but be taught
to conceive another idea of manliness than the formal carved-in-wood
idol of their national worship!

Dr Corney break