or no attention. Yet Peacock was a poet of considerable merit,
his best work in this direction being scattered at random
throughout his novels. In 1812 he contracted a friendship with
Shelley, whose executor he became with Lord Byron. Peacock's
first novel, "Headlong Hall," appeared in 1816, and is
interesting not so much as a story pure and simple, but as a
study of the author's own temperament. His personalities are
seldom real live characters; they are, rather, mouthpieces
created for the purposes of discussion. Peacock died on
January 23, 1866.

_I.--The Philosophers_

The ambiguous light of a December morning, peeping through the windows
of the Holyhead mail, dispelled the soft visions of the four insides,
who had slept, or seemed to sleep, through the first seventy miles of
the road.

A lively remark that the day was none of the finest having elicited a
repartee of "quite the contrary," the various knotty points of
meteorology were successively discussed and exhausted; and, the ice
being thus broken, in the course of conversation it appeared that all
four, though perfect strangers to each other, were actually bound to the
same point, namely, Headlong Hall, the seat of the ancient family of the
Headlongs, of the vale of Llanberris, in Carnarvonshire.

The present representative of the house, Harry Headlong, Esquire, was,
like all other Welsh squires, fond of shooting, hunting, racing,
drinking, and other such innocent amusements. But, unlike other Welsh
squires, he had actually suffered books to find their way into his
house; and, by dint of lounging over them after dinner, he became seized
with a violent passion to be thought a philosopher and a man of taste,
and had formed in London as extensive an acquaintance with philosophers
and dilettanti as his utmost ambition could desire. It now became his
chief wish to have them all together in Headlong Hall, arguing over his
old Port and Burgundy the various knotty points which puzzled him. He
had, therefore, sent them invitations in due form to pass their
Christmas at Headlong Hall, and four of the chosen guests were now on
their way in the four corners of the Holyhead mail.

These four persons were Mr. Foster, the optimist, who believed in the
improvement of mankind; Mr. Escot, the pessimist, who saw mankind
constantly deteriorating; Mr. Jenkison, who thought things were very
well as they were; and the Reverend