I thought you knew better. You must throw in patches of
philosophy every now and then.

_A._ Philosophy in a fashionable novel?

_B._ Most assuredly, or it would be complained of as trifling; but a
piece, now and then, of philosophy, as unintelligible as possible,
stamps it with deep thought. In the dressing-room, or boudoir, it must
be occasionally Epicurean; elsewhere, especially in the open air, more
Stoical.

_A._ I'm afraid that I shall not manage that without a specimen to copy
from. Now I think of it, Eugene Aram says something very beautiful on a
starry night.

_B._ He does: it is one of the most splendid pieces of writing in our
language. But I will have no profanation, Arthur;--to your pen again,
and write. We'll suppose our hero to have retired from the crowded
festivities of a ball-room at some lordly mansion in the country, and to
have wandered into a churchyard, damp and dreary with a thick London
fog. In the light dress of fashion, he throws himself on a tombstone.
"Ye dead!" exclaims the hero, "where are ye? Do your disembodied spirits
now float around me, and, shrouded in this horrible veil of nature,
glare unseen upon vitality? Float ye upon this intolerable mist, in
yourselves still more misty and intolerable? Hold ye high jubilee
to-night? or do ye crouch behind these monitorial stones, gibbering and
chattering at one who dares thus to invade your precincts? Here may I
hold communion with my soul, and, in the invisible presence of those who
could, but dare not to reveal. Away! it must not be."

_A._ What mustn't be?

_B._ That is the mystery which gives the point to his soliloquy. Leave
it to the reader's imagination.

_A._ I understand. But still the Honourable Augustus cannot lie in bed
much longer, and I really shall not be able to get him out without your
assistance. I do not comprehend how a man can get out of bed
_gracefully_; he must show his bare legs, and the alteration of position
is in itself awkward.

_B._ Not half so awkward as you are. Do you not feel that he must not be
got out of bed at all--that is, by description.

_A._ How then?

_B._ By saying nothing about it. Re-commence as follows:--"'I should
like the bath at seventy-six and a half, Coridon,' observed the
Honourable Augustus Bouverie, as he wrapped his embroidered
dressing-gown round his elegant form, and sank into a _chaise longue_,
wheeled by his faithful attendant to the fire." There, you observe, he
is out of