ection of the subject were
left to Kennedy, he would hit on one of those most familiar at Oxford.

The supper was ended, the tables were removed, and the challenge took
place. Duke Murdoch, leaning back in his high chair by the peat-fire,
while the ladies sat round at their spinning, called for the two young
clerks to begin their tourney of words. They stood opposite one another,
on the step of the dais; and Kennedy, as host and challenger, assigned to
his opponent the choice of a subject, when Malcolm, brightening, proposed
one that he had so often heard and practised on, as to have the arguments
at his fingers' ends; namely, that the real consists only in that which
is substantial to the senses, and which we see, hear, taste, smell, or
touch.

Kennedy's shrewd gray eye glanced at him in a manner that startled him,
as he made reply, 'Fellow-_alumnus_, you speak as Oxford scholars speak;
but I rede ye well that the real is not that which is grossly tangible to
the corporeal sense, but the idea that is conceived within the immortal
intelligence.'

The argument was carried on in the vernacular, but there was an unlimited
license of quotation from authors of all kinds, classics, Fathers, and
schoolmen. It was like a game at chess, in which the first moves were
always so much alike, that they might have been made by automatons; and
Malcolm was repeating reply and counter-reply, almost by rote, when a
citation brought in by Kennedy again startled him.

'Outward things,' said James, 'are the mere mark; for have we not heard
how

"Telephus et Peleus, quum pauper et exsul uterque,
Projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba"?' {6}

Was this to prove that he recognized a wandering prince in his opponent?
thought Malcolm; but, much on his guard, he made answer, as usual, in his
native tongue. 'That which is not touched and held is but a vain and
fleeting shadow--"_solvitur in nube_." {7}

'_Negatur_, it is denied!' said Kennedy, fixing his eyes full upon him.
'The Speculum of the Soul, which is immortal, retains the image even
while the bodily presence is far away. Wherefore else was it that
Ulysses sat as a beggar by his paternal hearth, or that Cadmus wandered
to seek his sister?'

This was anything but the regular illustration--the argument was far too
directly _ad hominem_--and Malcolm hesitated for a moment, ere framing
his reply. 'If the image had satisfied the craving of their hearts, they
had never wand