o Englishman will tolerate another in his
house, from whom he does not expect advantage of some kind, and to those
from whom he does he can be civil enough. An Englishman thinks that,
because he is in his own house, he has a right to be boorish and brutal
to any one who is disagreeable to him, as all those are who are really in
want of assistance. Should a hunted fugitive rush into an Englishman's
house, beseeching protection, and appealing to the master's feelings of
hospitality, the Englishman would knock him down in the passage.'

'You are too general,' said I, 'in your strictures. Lord ---, the
unpopular Tory minister, was once chased through the streets of London by
a mob, and, being in danger of his life, took shelter in the shop of a
Whig linen-draper, declaring his own unpopular name, and appealing to the
linen-draper's feelings of hospitality; whereupon the linen-draper,
utterly forgetful of all party rancour, nobly responded to the appeal,
and telling his wife to conduct his lordship upstairs, jumped over the
counter, with his ell in his hand, and placing himself with half-a-dozen
of his assistants at the door of his boutique, manfully confronted the
mob, telling them that he would allow himself to be torn to a thousand
pieces ere he would permit them to injure a hair of his lordship's head:
what do you think of that?'

'He! he! he!' tittered the man in black.

'Well,' said I, 'I am afraid your own practice is not very different from
that which you have been just now describing; you sided with the Radical
in the public-house against me, as long as you thought him the most
powerful, and then turned against him when you saw he was cowed. What
have you to say to that?'

'Oh, when one is in Rome, I mean England, one must do as they do in
England; I was merely conforming to the custom of the country, he! he!
but I beg your pardon here, as I did in the public-house. I made a
mistake.'

'Well,' said I, 'we will drop the matter, but pray seat yourself on that
stone, and I will sit down on the grass near you.'

The man in black, after proffering two or three excuses for occupying
what he supposed to be my seat, sat down upon the stone, and I squatted
down, gypsy-fashion, just opposite to him, Belle sitting on her stool at
a slight distance on my right. After a time I addressed him thus: 'Am I
to reckon this a mere visit of ceremony? should it prove so, it will be,
I believe, the first visit of the kind ever