re taller; and I fancy, with such
figures as theirs, they are neither of them likely to think of any
rivalship with our dear old mother. What island, for instance, would
choose to be such a great fat beast as Borneo, as broad as she is long,
with no apology for a waist? Talk of lacing too tight, indeed! I'm sure
Borneo does not injure herself in that way. Now our mother, though she's
old, and has gone through a world of trouble in her time, is as jimp
about the waist as a young lass of seventeen. Look at her on any map of
Europe, and she's quite a picture. It's an old remark that the general
outline of the dear creature exactly resembles a lady sitting. She turns
her back upon the Continent, no doubt, and that's what makes those
foreigneering rascals talk so much of her pride. But she _must_ turn her
back upon somebody, and who is it that should have the benefit of her
countenance, if not those people in the far West that are come of her
own blood? They say she's 'tetyy' also. Well, then, if she is, you let
her alone, good people of the Continent. She'll not meddle with you if
you don't meddle with her. She's kind enough, and, as to her person, I
do maintain that she's quite tall enough, rather thin, it's true, but,
on the whole, a bonny, elegant, dear old fighting mamma.

_Mora Alexandrina._--Note on Middleton's affected sneer. A villa of
Cicero's, where probably the usual sound heard would be the groans of
tormented slaves, had been changed for the cells of Christian monks. Now
mark: what the hound Middleton means is, how shocking to literary
sensibilities that where an elegant master of Latinity had lived, there
should succeed dull, lazy monks, writing (if they wrote at all) in a
barbarous style, and dreaming away their lives in torpor. Now permit me
to pause a little. This is one of those sneers which Paley[38] and
Bishop Butler[39] think so unanswerable, that we must necessarily lie
down and let the sneer ride rough-shod over us all. Let us see, and for
this reason, reader, do not grudge a little delay, especially as you may
'skip' it.

Dr. Conyers ought to have remembered, in the first place, that the villa
could not long remain in the hands of Cicero. Another owner would
succeed, and then the chances would be that the sounds oftenest
ascending in the hour of sunset or in the cool of the dawn would be the
shrieks of slaves under torture. By their own poor miserable fare
contrasted with the splendour reeking aro