at a draught.

John stood with wonder petrified,
His hair stood on his pate,
"And why dost guzzle now," he cried,
"At that enormous rate?"

"Oh, John!" she said, "I'm not to blame--
I _can't in conscience_ stop--
For sure 'twould be a burning shame
To leave the devil a drop."

Changeable, versatile, inconstant Eusebius, where is now your burst of
philanthropy--where is all your rage? Pretty havoc you would but now have
made, had you been armed with thunder--thunder, I say, for yours would
have been no silent devastation among the villains. No Warnerian silent
blazeless destruction would suit your indignation--in open day, and with
a shout, would you do it, and in such wise would you suffer, if needs
must, with Ajax's prayer in your mouth--"+En de Phaei kai olesson+."
But for a grand picture of a sweeping indignation, there is nothing so
grand as that fine passage in the Psalms--"Let them be as the dust before
the wind, and the angel of the Lord scattering them." Men and all their
iniquities, once so mighty, so vast, but as grains less than grains of
dust--all the clouds of hypocrisy dispersed in atoms before the fury of
the storm of vengeance. You were, as you read, Eusebius, in honest rage.
I could see you as in a picture, like the figure with the scourge in hand
flying off the very ground, in Raffaelle's noble fresco, the Heliodorus;
and now are you far more like a merryandrew in your mirth, and the
quaint sly humour of the tale in verse has made you blind to the
delinquencies of the quaffing Joan. Blind to their delinquencies! Stay
your mirth a moment, Eusebius--are you not blind to your own? Now I
remember me, you are a thief, Eusebius, however you may have settled
that matter with your conscience. Have you read the proposed "Dog-bill?"
Here's a pretty to do!--Eusebius convicted of dog-stealing--subject to
the penalty of misdemeanour! "I!" you will say. Yes, you. You put it
down, doubtless, in the catalogue of your virtues, as you did when you
boasted to me that you had, by a lucky detection in probably the
criminal's first offence, saved a fellow-creature from a course of
crime. Do you remember your dog Chance? yes, _your_ dog, for so you
called him--and, pray, how came you by him? This was your version. A
regiment was marching by your neighbourhood, at the fag-end of which a
soldier led a very fine spaniel by a piece of cord. You always loved
dogs--did you not, you cunn