at the glorious old Sciote was a myth, and the
Odyssey a magazine worked out by clever contributors. They might as well
assert that all his marshals would have made up one Napoleon.

I remember how we used to pass in review the beauties of old time, for
whom "many drew swords and died," whose charms convulsed kingdoms and
ruined cities, who called the stars after their own names.

Ah! Gyneth and Ida, peerless queens of beauty, it was exciting,
doubtless, to gaze down from your velveted gallery on the mad tilting
below, to see ever and anon through the yellow dust a kind, handsome
face looking up at you, pale but scarcely reproachful, just before the
horse-hoofs trod it down; ah! fairest Ninons and Dianas--prizes that,
like the Whip at Newmarket, were always to be challenged for--you were
proud when your reckless lover came to woo, with the blood of last
night's favorite not dry on his blade; but what were your fatal honors
compared to those of a reigning toast in the rough, ancient days? The
demigods and heroes that were suitors did not stand upon trifles, and
the contest often ended in the extermination of all the lady's male
relatives to the third and fourth generation. People then took it quite
as a matter of course--rather a credit to the family than otherwise.

Guy and I discussed, often and gravely, the relative merits of Evadne
the violet-haired, Helen, Cleopatra, and a hundred others, just as, on
the steps of White's, or in the smoking-room at the "Rag," men compare
the points of the _debutantes_ of the season.

His knowledge of feminine psychology--it _must_ have been theoretical,
for he was not seventeen--implied a study and depth of research that was
quite surprising; but I am bound to state that his estimate of the
strength of character and principle inherent in the weaker sex was any
thing but high; nearly, indeed, identical with that formed by the
learned lady who, to the question, "Did she think the virtue of any
single one of her sisterhood impregnable?" replied "_C'est selon_." He
often used to astonish my weak mind by his observations on this head. I
did not know till afterward that Sir Henry Fallowfield, the Bassompierre
of his day, came for the Christmas pheasant-shooting every year into
Guy's neighborhood, and that he had already imbibed lessons of
questionable morality, sitting at the gouty feet of that evil Gamaliel.

He spoke of and to women of every class readily whenever he got the
chance,