not help testifying some displeasure against the
Blessed Bear, which had given rise to the quarrel, nor refrain from
hinting that the sanctified epithet was hardly appropriate. The Baron
observed, he could not deny that 'the Bear, though allowed by heralds as
a most honourable ordinary, had, nevertheless, somewhat fierce, churlish,
and morose in his disposition (as might be read in Archibald Simson,
pastor of Dalkeith's 'Hieroglyphica Animalium') and had thus been the
type of many quarrels and dissensions which had occurred in the house of
Bradwardine; of which,' he continued, 'I might commemorate mine own
unfortunate dissension with my third cousin by the mother's side, Sir Hew
Halbert, who was so unthinking as to deride my family name, as if it had
been QUASI BEAR-WARDEN; a most uncivil jest, since it not only insinuated
that the founder of our house occupied such a mean situation as to be a
custodier of wild beasts, a charge which, ye must have observed, is only
entrusted to the very basest plebeians; but, moreover, seemed to infer
that our coat-armour had not been achieved by honourable actions in war,
but bestowed by way of paranomasia, or pun, upon our family
appellation,--a sort of bearing which the French call armoires parlantes,
the Latins arma cantantia, and your English authorities canting heraldry,
[Footnote: See Note 37] being indeed a species of emblazoning more
befitting canters, gaberlunzies, and such like mendicants, whose
gibberish is formed upon playing upon the word, than the noble,
honourable, and useful science of heraldry, which assigns armorial
bearings as the reward of noble and generous actions, and not to tickle
the ear with vain quodlibets, such as are found in jestbooks.' Of his
quarrel with Sir Hew he said nothing more than that it was settled in a
fitting manner.

Having been so minute with respect to the diversions of Tully-Veolan on
the first days of Edward's arrival, for the purpose of introducing its
inmates to the reader's acquaintance, it becomes less necessary to trace
the progress of his intercourse with the same accuracy. It is probable
that a young man, accustomed to more cheerful society, would have tired
of the conversation of so violent an assertor of the 'boast of heraldry'
as the Baron; but Edward found an agreeable variety in that of Miss
Bradwardine, who listened with eagerness to his remarks upon literature,
and showed great justness of taste in her answers. The sweetness