and
disheartened, "what a parent, if the opinions of all men who knew him be
true, do I thus zealously seek to recover!"

The good-natured Elmore, perceiving the unwelcome and painful impression
his account had produced on his young guest, now exerted himself to
remove, or at least to lessen it; and turning the conversation into a
classical channel, which with him was the Lethe to all cares, he soon
forgot that Clarke had ever existed, in expatiating on the unappreciated
excellences of Propertius, who, to his mind, was the most tender of all
elegiac poets, solely because he was the most learned. Fortunately this
vein of conversation, however tedious to Walter, preserved him from the
necessity of rejoinder, and left him to the quiet enjoyment of his own
gloomy and restless reflections.

At length the time touched upon dinner; Elmore, starting up, adjourned
to the drawing-room, in order to present the handsome stranger to the
placens uxor--the pleasing wife, whom, in passing through the hall, he
eulogized with an amazing felicity of diction.

The object of these praises was a tall, meagre lady, in a yellow dress
carried up to the chin, and who added a slight squint to the charms of
red hair, ill concealed by powder, and the dignity of a prodigiously
high nose. "There is nothing, Sir," said Elmore, "nothing, believe me,
like matrimonial felicity. Julia, my dear, I trust the chickens will not
be overdone."

"Indeed, Mr. Elmore, I cannot tell; I did not boil them."

"Sir," said Elmore, turning to his guest, I do not know whether you
will agree with me, but I think a slight tendency to gourmandism is
absolutely necessary to complete the character of a truly classical
mind. So many beautiful touches are there in the ancient poets--so
many delicate allusions in history and in anecdote relating to the
gratification of the palate, that if a man have no correspondent
sympathy with the illustrious epicures of old, he is rendered incapable
of enjoying the most beautiful passages, that--Come, Sir, the dinner is
served:

"'Nutrimus lautis mollissima corpora mensis.'"

As they crossed the hall to the dining-room, a young lady, whom Elmore
hastily announced as his only daughter, appeared descending the stairs,
having evidently retired for the purpose of re-arranging her attire for
the conquest of the stranger. There was something in Miss Elmore that
reminded Walter of Ellinor, and, as the likeness struck him, he felt, by