ct recognisable.'

'Ay, like those Irish airs that will produce tears or laughter, as they
are played slow or quick; or minced veal, my dear Puddock, which the
cook can dress either savoury or sweet at pleasure; or Aunt Rebecca,
that produces such different emotions in her different moods, and
according to our different ways of handling her, is scarce recognisable
in some of them, though still the same Aunt Becky,' answered Devereux,
knocking at Irons' door.

'No, but seriously, by sometimes changing an old person to a young,
sometimes a comical to a melancholy, or the reverse, sometimes a male
for a female, or a female for a male--I assure you, you can so entirely
disguise the piece, and yet produce situations so new and
surprising----.'

'I see, by all the gods at once, 'tis an immortal idea! Let's take
Othello--I'll set about it to-morrow--to-night, by Jove! A gay young
Venetian nobleman, of singular beauty, charmed by her tales of
"anthropophagites and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders,"
is seduced from his father's house, and married by a middle-aged,
somewhat hard-featured black woman, Juno, or Dido, who takes him
away--not to Cyprus--we must be original, but we'll suppose to the
island of Stromboli--and you can have an eruption firing away during the
last act. There Dido grows jealous of our hero, though he's as innocent
as Joseph; and while his valet is putting him to bed he'll talk to him
and prattle some plaintive little tale how his father had a man called
Barbarus. And then, all being prepared, and his bed-room candle put out,
Dido enters, looking unusually grim, and smothers him with a pillow in
spite of his cries and affecting entreaties, and---- By Jupiter! here's
a letter from Bath, too.'

He had lighted the candles, and the letter with its great red eye of a
seal, lying upon the table, transfixed his wandering glance, and smote
somehow to his heart with an indefinite suspense and misgiving.

'With your permission, my dear Puddock?' said Devereux, before breaking
the seal; for in those days they grew ceremonious the moment a point of
etiquette turned up. Puddock gave him leave, and he read the letter.

'From my aunt,' he said, throwing it down with a discontented air; and
then he read it once more, thought for a while, and put it into his
pocket. 'The countess says I must go, Puddock. She has got my leave from
the general; and hang it--there's no help for it--I can't vex her, you
kno