somewhere. I grant all the wonderful powers of invention bestowed on
the creators of poetic romance; still not the sovereign masters in that
realm of literature--not Scott, not Cervantes, not Goethe, not even
Shakspeare--could have presumed to rebuild the past without such
materials as they found in the books that record it. And though I, no
less cheerfully, grant that we have now living among us a creator of
poetic romance immeasurably more inventive than they,--appealing to our
credulity in portents the most monstrous, with a charm of style the
most conversationally familiar,--still I cannot conceive that even that
unrivalled romance-writer can so bewitch our understandings as to make
us believe that, if Miss Mordaunt's cat dislikes to wet her feet, it is
probably because in the prehistoric age her ancestors lived in the dry
country of Egypt; or that when some lofty orator, a Pitt or a Gladstone,
rebuts with a polished smile which reveals his canine teeth the rude
assault of an opponent, he betrays his descent from a 'semi-human
progenitor' who was accustomed to snap at his enemy. Surely, surely
there must be some books still extant written by philosophers before the
birth of Adam, in which there is authority, even though but in mythic
fable, for such poetic inventions. Surely, surely some early chroniclers
must depose that they saw, saw with their own eyes, the great gorillas
who scratched off their hairy coverings to please the eyes of the young
ladies of their species, and that they noted the gradual metamorphosis
of one animal into another. For, if you tell me that this illustrious
romance-writer is but a cautious man of science, and that we must accept
his inventions according to the sober laws of evidence and fact, there
is not the most incredible ghost story which does not better satisfy the
common sense of a sceptic. However, if you have no such books, lend
me the most unphilosophical you possess,--on magic, for instance,--the
philosopher's stone"--

"I have some of them," said the vicar, laughing; "you shall choose for
yourself."

"If you are going homeward, let me accompany you part of the way: I
don't yet know where the church and the vicarage are, and I ought to
know before I come in the evening."

Kenelm and the vicar walked side by side, very sociably, across the
bridge and on the side of the rivulet on which stood Mrs. Cameron's
cottage. As they skirted the garden pale at the rear of the cottage,
Ke