unauthor-like neatness, my prints hung, my casts and models all
bracketed, and all have vanished like the

--baseless fabric of a vision."

"And is this your misery," said Tom, "upon my soul I began to think you
had lost your wife; but it seems you have only lost your wits. What the
devil did you expect when you joined issue--to live as you have done
like a hermit in a cell? Well if this is all I do pity you indeed."

"But you have not heard half yet. The whole house is transformed."

"And I think you ought to be reformed," continued Tom.

Notwithstanding the lightness and satire with which our Hero appeared to
treat the subject, poor Distich was not to be stayed in his course.

"Ah!" said he, with a sigh, "In vain did Cicero strain his neck to
peep over Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful--Shakespeare beard Blair's
Sermons and Humphrey Glinkert or Milton's sightless balls gleam over Sir
Walter Scott's Epics--all, all, is chaos and misrule. Even my greenhouse
over my head which held three ci-devant pots of mignonette, one decayed
mirtle, a soi-disant geranium and other exotics, which are to spring
out afresh in the summer--my shrubs are clapped under my couch, and
my evergreens stuck over the kitchen fire place, are doomed to this
unpropitious hot-bed, in order to make room for pattens, clogs, cloaks,
and shawls, for all the old maids in Town."

Tom bit his lip to stifle a laugh, and treading lightly on the toe of
his cousin, had so strongly excited Tallyho's risibility, that it was
with difficulty he resisted the momentary impulse.

The routed Benedict continued--"Our Drawing Room, ~154~~which
conveniently holds ten persons, is to be the black hole for thirty--My
study, dear beloved retreat, where sonnets have been composed and novels
written--this spot which just holds me and my cat, is to be the scene of
bagatelle, commerce, or any thing else that a parcel of giggling girls
may chuse to act in it,--my statues are converted--Diabolus is made to
hold a spermaceti candle, while the Medicean nymph, my Apollo Belvidere,
and my dancing fawn, being too bulky to move, are adorned with aprons
of green silk, because forsooth Betty says they are vastly undecent with
nothing on them, and my wife is quite certain "that no one will visit
us, unless we do as other people do." Alas! until the success of my last
poem, we never cared about other people, and I am now absolutely turned
out, to make room for them, and advised