ed what?" said kind Mrs. Hood, anxiously, colouring to the
temples, and fancying there was something amiss in the piece he had
been helped to. "Believe what? why, madam, that Charles Lamb was a
backbiter?" Hood gave one of his short, quick laughs, gone almost ere it
had come, whilst Lamb went off into a loud fit of mirth, exclaiming:
"Now, that's devilish good! I'll sup with you to-morrow night." This
eccentric flight made everybody very merry, and amidst a most amusing
mixture of wit and humour, sense and nonsense, we feasted merrily,
amidst jocose health-drinking, sentiments, speeches, and songs.

Mr. Hood, with inexpressible gravity in the upper part of his face and
his mouth twitching with smiles, sang his own comic song, "If you go to
France, be sure you learn the lingo," his pensive manner and feeble
voice making it doubly ludicrous. Mr. Lamb, on being pressed to sing,
excused himself in his own peculiar manner, but offered to pronounce a
Latin eulogium instead. This was accepted, and he accordingly stammered
forth a string of Latin words; among which, as the name of Mrs. Hood
frequently occurred, we ladies thought it was in praise of her. The
delivery of his speech occupied about five minutes. On inquiring of a
gentleman who sat next to me whether Mr. Lamb was praising Mrs. Hood, he
informed me that it was by no means the case, the eulogium being on the
lobster-salad!

IN A COACH
[Sidenote: _Charles Lamb_]

The incidents of our journey were trifling, but you bade me tell them.
We had, then, in the coach a rather talkative gentleman, but very civil,
all the way, and took up a servant-maid at Stamford, going to a sick
mistress.... The _former_ engaged me in a discourse for full twenty
miles on the probable advantages of Steam Carriages, which, being merely
problematical, I bore my part in with some credit, in spite of my
totally un-engineer-like faculties. But when, somewhere about Stanstead,
he put an unfortunate question tome as to the "probability of its
turning out a good turnip season," and when I, who am still less of an
agriculturist than a steam-philosopher, not knowing a turnip from a
potato-ground, innocently made answer that I believed it depended very
much upon boiled legs of mutton, my unlucky reply set Miss Isola
a-laughing to a degree that disturbed her tranquillity for the only
moment in our journey. I am afraid my credit sank very low with my other
fellow-traveller, who had thought he had met