false
pretence that he would there meet with one who entertained novel and
anarchical opinions regarding the Golden Ass of Apuleius? No one speaks
of waiting dinner for him. He will come and depart at his own sweet
will, neither burdened with punctualities nor burdening others by
exacting them. The festivities of the afternoon are far on when a
commotion is heard in the hall as if some dog or other stray animal had
forced its way in. The instinct of a friendly guest tells him of the
arrival--he opens the door, and fetches in the little stranger. What can
it be? a street-boy of some sort? His costume, in fact, is a boy's
duffle great-coat, very threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned
tight to the chin, where it meets the fragments of a parti-coloured
belcher handkerchief; on his feet are list-shoes, covered with snow, for
it is a stormy winter night; and the trousers--some one suggests that
they are inner linen garments blackened with writing-ink, but that
Papaverius never would have been at the trouble so to disguise them.
What can be the theory of such a costume? The simplest thing in the
world--it consisted of the fragments of apparel nearest at hand. Had
chance thrown to him a court single-breasted coat, with a bishop's
apron, a kilt, and top-boots, in these he would have made his entry.

The first impression that a boy has appeared vanishes instantly. Though
in one of the sweetest and most genial of his essays he shows how every
man retains so much in him of the child he originally was--and he
himself retained a great deal of that primitive simplicity--it was
buried within the depths of his heart--not visible externally. On the
contrary, on one occasion when he corrected an erroneous reference to an
event as being a century old, by saying that he recollected its
occurrence, one felt almost a surprise at the necessary limitation in
his age, so old did he appear, with his arched brow loaded with thought,
and the countless little wrinkles which engrained his skin, gathering
thickly round the curiously expressive and subtle lips. These lips are
speedily opened by some casual remark, and presently the flood of talk
passes forth from them, free, clear, and continuous--never rising into
declamation--never losing a certain mellow earnestness, and all
consisting of sentences as exquisitely jointed together as if they were
destined to challenge the criticism of the remotest posterity. Still the
hours stride over each othe