nd each."

"So much expressed in so few syllables!"

"I think I see every shoal, current, ripple, rock, island, and whale,
between Sandy Hook and the Land's End."

"He hints at an epic."

"Pray God he may execute one. Let him make haste, too, or he may get
'behind the age,' 'behind the age.'"

Here the lady was called away to receive a guest.

"Cousin Jack!"

"Eve Effingham?"

"Do you not sometimes fear offending?"

"Not a woman who begins with expressing her admiration of such a
sublime thing as this. You are safe with such a person, any where
short of a tweak of the nose."

"_Mais, tout ceci est bien drole!_"

"You never were more mistaken in your life, Mademoiselle; every body
here looks upon it as a matter of life and death."

The new guest was Mr. Pindar, one of those careless, unsentimental
fellows, that occasionally throw off an ode that passes through
Christendom, as dollars are known to pass from China to Norway, and
yet, who never fancied spectacles necessary to his appearance,
solemnity to his face, nor _soirees_ to his renown. After quitting
Mrs. Legend, he approached Eve, to whom he was slightly known, and
accosted her.

"This is the region of taste, Miss Effingham," he said, with a shrug
of the jaw, if such a member can shrug; "and I do not wonder at
finding you here."

He then chatted pleasantly a moment, with the party, and passed on,
giving an ominous gape, as he drew nearer to the _oi polloi_ of
literature. A moment after appeared Mr. Gray, a man who needed
nothing but taste in the public, and the encouragement that would
follow such a taste, to stand at, or certainty near, the head of the
poets of our own time. He, too, looked shily at the galaxy, and took
refuge in a corner. Mr. Pith followed; a man whose caustic wit needs
only a sphere for its exercise, manners to portray, and a society
with strong points about it to illustrate, in order to enrol his name
high on the catalogue of satirists. Another ring announced Mr. Fun, a
writer of exquisite humour, and of finished periods, but who, having
perpetrated a little too much sentiment, was instantly seized upon by
all the ultra ladies who were addicted to the same taste in that way,
in the room.

These persons came late, like those who had already been too often
dosed in the same way, to be impatient of repetitions. The three
first soon got together in a corner, and Eve fancied they were
laughing at the rest of the company; whereas