on the terraces; and the guinea-fowls looked more
quaker-like than those savoury birds usually do. The lodge-keeper
was serious, and a clerk at a neighbouring chapel. The pastors who
entered at that gate, and greeted his comely wife and children, fed
the little lambkins with tracts. The head-gardener was a Scotch
Calvinist, after the strictest order, only occupying himself with
the melons and pines provisionally, and until the end of the world,
which event, he could prove by infallible calculations was to come
off in two or three years at farthest."

In one place, a collision is represented between the old and young
schools of criticism:

"The Colonel heard opinions that amazed and bewildered him; he
heard that Byron was no great poet, though a very clever man; he
heard that there had been a wicked persecution against Mr. Pope's
memory and fame, and that it was time to reinstate him; that his
favourite, Dr. Johnson, talked admirably, but did not write
English; that young Keats was a genius to be estimated in future
days with young Raphael; and that a young gentleman of Cambridge,
who had lately published two volumes of verses, might take rank
with the greatest poets of all. Dr. Johnson not write English! Lord
Byron not one of the greatest poets of the world! Sir Walter a poet
of the second order! Mr. Pope attacked for inferiority and want of
imagination; Mr. Keats, and this young Mr. Tennyson of Cambridge,
the chiefs of modern poetic literature? What were these new dicta
which Mr. Warrington delivered with a puff of tobacco smoke, to
which Mr. Honeyman blandly assented, and Clive listened with
pleasure?... With Newcome, the admiration for the literature of the
last century was an article of belief, and the incredulity of the
young men seemed rank blasphemy. 'You will be sneering at
Shakespeare next,' he said, and was silenced, though not better
pleased, when his youthful guests told him that Dr. Goldsmith
sneered at him too; that Dr. Johnson did not understand him, and
that Congreve in his own day, and afterwards, was considered to be,
in some points, Shakespeare's superior."

In the next he relapses into his stronger sarcasm--

"There are no better satires than letters. Take a bundle of your
dear friends' letters of ten years back--your dear friend, who