edged
further into the circle. He had sat silent so long that he seemed ready
to burst with gall and indignation. "Mighty pretty verses!" said he,
half talking to himself, and not addressing any particular person: "why,
ay, the verses are well enough. Damnation! I should like to know what a
ship-load of such stuff is good for."

"Why, surely," said the lady who had introduced Mr. Falkland's Ode on
the present occasion, "you must allow that poetry is an agreeable and
elegant amusement."

"Elegant, quotha!--Why, look at this Falkland! A puny bit of a thing! In
the devil's name, madam, do you think he would write poetry if he could
do any thing better?"

The conversation did not stop here. The lady expostulated. Several other
persons, fresh from the sensation they had felt, contributed their
share. Mr. Tyrrel grew more violent in his invectives, and found ease in
uttering them. The persons who were able in any degree to check his
vehemence were withdrawn. One speaker after another shrunk back into
silence, too timid to oppose, or too indolent to contend with, the
fierceness of his passion. He found the appearance of his old
ascendancy; but he felt its deceitfulness and uncertainty, and was
gloomily dissatisfied.

In his return from this assembly he was accompanied by a young man,
whom similitude of manners had rendered one of his principal confidents,
and whose road home was in part the same as his own. One might have
thought that Mr. Tyrrel had sufficiently vented his spleen in the
dialogue he had just been holding. But he was unable to dismiss from his
recollection the anguish he had endured. "Damn Falkland!" said he. "What
a pitiful scoundrel is here to make all this bustle about! But women and
fools always will be fools; there is no help for that! Those that set
them on have most to answer for; and most of all, Mr. Clare. He is a man
that ought to know something of the world, and past being duped by
gewgaws and tinsel. He seemed, too, to have some notion of things: I
should not have suspected him of hallooing to a cry of mongrels without
honesty or reason. But the world is all alike. Those that seem better
than their neighbours, are only more artful. They mean the same thing,
though they take a different road. He deceived me for a while, but it is
all out now. They are the makers of the mischief. Fools might blunder,
but they would not persist, if people that ought to set them right did
not encourage them to go w