hat he flattered himself he had made the point under discussion
tolerably clear; "clear," he added, bowing round the half-circle of us,
the audience, "to the meanest of capacities;" and then he repeated,
sonorously, "clear to the most excruciatingly mean of capacities." Upon
which a voice, a female one, but whose I had not time to distinguish,
retorted: "No, you haven't; it's as dark as sin;" and then, without a
moment's interval, a second voice exclaimed, "Dark as night;" then came
my young brother's insurrectionary yell, "Dark as midnight;" then
another female voice chimed in melodiously, "Dark as pitch;" and so the
peal continued to come round like a catch, the whole being so well
concerted, and the rolling fire so well sustained, that it was
impossible to make head against it; while the abruptness of the
interruption gave to it the protecting character of an oral "round
robin," it being impossible to challenge any one in particular as the
ring-leader. Burke's phrase of "the swinish multitude," applied to mobs,
was then in every body's mouth; and, accordingly, after my brother had
recovered from his first astonishment at this insurrection, he made us
several sweeping bows that looked very much like tentative rehearsals of
a sweeping _fusillade_, and then addressed us in a very brief speech, of
which we could distinguish the words _pearls_ and _swinish multitude_,
but uttered in a very low key, perhaps out of regard to the two young
strangers. We all laughed in chorus at this parting salute: my brother
himself condescended at last to join us; but there ended the course of
lectures on natural philosophy.

As it was impossible, however, that he should remain quiet, he announced
to us, that for the rest of his life he meant to dedicate himself to the
intense cultivation of the tragic drama. He got to work instantly; and
very soon he had composed the first act of his "Sultan Selim;" but, in
defiance of the metre, he soon changed the title to "Sultan Amurath,"
considering _that_ a much fiercer name, more bewhiskered and beturbaned.
It was no part of his intention that we should sit lolling on chairs
like ladies and gentlemen that had paid opera prices for private boxes.
He expected every one of us, he said, to pull an oar. We were to _act_
the tragedy. But, in fact, we had many oars to pull. There were so many
characters, that each of us took four, at the least, and the future
middy had six. He, this wicked little middy,[13