says my mother, and
she says what is very true,) can tell about the household affairs,
but those who have the management of them; and in pursuance of this
aphorism, I dare not accept any invitation in this house, except from
its mistress."

"Really," said Mrs. Clutterbuck, colouring, with mingled embarrassment
and gratification, "you are very considerate and polite, Mr. Pelham:
I only wish Mr. Clutterbuck had half your attention to these things;
nobody can tell the trouble and inconvenience he puts me to. If I had
known, a little time before, that you were coming--but now I fear we
have nothing in the house; but if you can partake of our fare, such as
it is, Mr. Pelham--"

"Your kindness enchants me," I exclaimed, "and I no longer scruple to
confess the pleasure I have in accepting my old friend's offer."

This affair being settled, I continued to converse for some minutes with
as much vivacity as I could summon to my aid, and when I went once more
to the library, it was with the comfortable impression of having left
those as friends, whom I had visited as foes.

The dinner hour was four, and till it came, Clutterbuck and I amused
ourselves "in commune wise and sage." There was something high in the
sentiments and generous in the feelings of this man, which made me
the more regret the bias of mind which rendered them so unavailing. At
college he had never (illis dissimilis in nostro tempore natis) cringed
to the possessors of clerical power. In the duties of his station, as
dean of the college, he was equally strict to the black cap and the
lordly hat. Nay, when one of his private pupils, whose father was
possessed of more church preferment than any nobleman in the peerage,
disobeyed his repeated summons, and constantly neglected to attend his
instructions, he sent for him, resigned his tuition, and refused any
longer to accept a salary which the negligence of his pupil would
not allow him to requite. In his clerical tenets he was high: in his
judgment of others he was mild. His knowledge of the liberty of Greece
was not drawn from the ignorant historian of her republics; [Note: It
is really a disgrace to the University, that any of its colleges should
accept as a reference, or even tolerate as an author, the presumptuous
bigot who has bequeathed to us, in his History of Greece, the
masterpiece of a declaimer without energy, and of a pedant without
learning.] nor did he find in the contemplative mildness and gentle