ed as Midas of
ancient times, who transformed every thing that he touched into gold!

The Egyptian and Etruscan antiquities next attracted the attention of
the visitors. Over a doorway in this room is a fine portrait of Sir
William Hamilton, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Dashall and Tallyho
remarked with enthusiasm on these beautiful relics of the sculpture
of former ages, several of which were mutilated and disfigured by the
dilapidations of time and accident. Of the company present, there stood
on the left a diminutive elderly gentleman in the act of contemplating
the fragment of a statue in a posterior position, and which certainly
exhibited somewhat of a ludicrous appearance; on the right, the
exquisite Jasper pointed out, with the self-sufficiency of an amateur,
the masculine symmetry of a Colossian statue to his Aunt of antiquated
virginity, whose maiden purity recoiling from the view of nudation,
seemed to say, "Jaz, wrap an apron round him!" while in the foreground
stood the rotunditive form of Timothy Surety, who declared, after a
cursory and contemptuous glance at the venerable representatives of
mythology, "That with the exception of the portrait of Sir William
Hamilton, there was not in the room an object worth looking at; and as
for them there ancient statutes," (such was his vernacular idiom and
Bearbinder barbarism) "I would not give twopence for the whole of this
here collection, if it was never for nothing else than to set them up as
scare-crows in the garden of my country house at Edmonton!"

Jasper whispered his aunt, that nuncks was a vile bore; and the
sacrilegious declaration gave great offence to the diminutive gentleman
aforesaid, who hesitated not in pronouncing Timothy Surety destitute of
taste and vertu; to which accusation Timothy, rearing his squat form
to its utmost altitude, indignantly replied, "that there was not an
alderman in the City of London of better taste than himself in the
qualities of callipash and callipee, and that if the little gemmen
presumed again to asperse his vartue, he would bring an action against
him tor slander and defamation of character." The minikin man gave
Timothy a glance of ineffable disdain, and left the room. Mrs. ~14~~
Tabitha, in the full consciousness of her superior acquirements, now
directed a lecture of edification to her brother, who, however, manfully
resisted her interference, and swore, that "where his taste and
_vartue_ were called in question