e me--the Rev. Hugh
Walsingham, Doctor of Divinity, and Rector of Chapelizod (she used to
give him at full length whenever she threatened Zekiel with a visitation
from that quarter, by way of adding ponderosity to the menace)--I'll go
to him straight--don't think to stop me--and we'll see what he'll say;'
and so she addressed herself to go.

'And when you see him, Madam, ask the learned doctor--don't ask
me--believe the rector of the parish--he'll tell you, that it hath
prevailed from the period at which Madam Sarah quarrelled with saucy
Miss Hagar; that it hath prevailed among all the principal nations of
antiquity, according to Pliny, Strabo, and the chief writers of
antiquity; that Juno, Dido, Eleanor Queen of England, and Mrs.
Partridge, whom I read of here (and he pointed to the open volume of Tom
Jones), each made, or thought she made, a like discovery.' And the
captain delivered this slowly, with knitted brow and thoughtful face,
after the manner of the erudite and simple doctor.

'Pretty Partridges, indeed! and nice game for a parish clerk!' cried the
lady, returning. 'I wonder, so I do, when I look at him, and think of
his goings on, how he can have the assurance to sit under the minister,
and look the congregation in the face, and tune his throat, and sing the
blessed psalms.'

'You are not to wonder, Madam; believe the sage, who says, _omnibus hoc
vitium est cantoribus_.'

Devereux knew of old that the effect of Latin on Mrs. Irons was to
heighten the inflammation, and so the matron burst into whole chapters
of crimination, enlivened with a sprinkling of strong words, as the
sages of the law love to pepper their indictments and informations with
hot adverbs and well-spiced parentheses, 'falsely,' 'scandalously,'
'maliciously,' and _suadente diabolo_, to make them sit warm on the
stomachs of a loyal judge and jury, and digest easily.

The neighbours were so accustomed to Mrs. Irons' griefs, that when her
voice was audible, as upon such occasions it was, upon the high road and
in the back gardens, it produced next to no sensation; everybody had
heard from that loud oracle every sort of story touching Irons which
could well be imagined, and it was all so thoroughly published by the
good lady, that curiosity on the subject was pretty well dead and gone,
and her distant declamation rattled over their heads and boomed in their
ears, like the distant guns and trumpets on a review day, signifying
nothing.

An