might like to see something I received this morning.'

He unfolded a London evening paper, and indicated a long letter from
a casual correspondent. It was written by the authoress of 'On the
Boards,' and drew attention, with much expenditure of witticism, to the
conflicting notices of that book which had appeared in The Study. Jasper
read the thing with laughing appreciation.

'Just what one expected!'

'And I have private letters on the subject,' added Mr Yule.

'There has been something like a personal conflict between Fadge and the
man who looks after the minor notices. Fadge, more so, charged the other
man with a design to damage him and the paper. There's talk of legal
proceedings. An immense joke!'

He laughed in his peculiar croaking way.

'Do you feel disposed for a turn along the lanes, Mr Milvain?'

'By all means.--There's my mother at the window; will you come in for a
moment?'

With a step of quite unusual sprightliness Mr Yule entered the house.
He could talk of but one subject, and Mrs Milvain had to listen to a
laboured account of the blunder just committed by The Study. It was
Alfred's Yule's characteristic that he could do nothing lighthandedly.
He seemed always to converse with effort; he took a seat with stiff
ungainliness; he walked with a stumbling or sprawling gait.

When he and Jasper set out for their ramble, his loquacity was in strong
contrast with the taciturn mood he had exhibited yesterday and the day
before. He fell upon the general aspects of contemporary literature.

'... The evil of the time is the multiplication of ephemerides. Hence a
demand for essays, descriptive articles, fragments of criticism, out of
all proportion to the supply of even tolerable work. The men who have
an aptitude for turning out this kind of thing in vast quantities are
enlisted by every new periodical, with the result that their productions
are ultimately watered down into worthlessness.... Well now, there's
Fadge. Years ago some of Fadge's work was not without a certain--a
certain conditional promise of--of comparative merit; but now his
writing, in my opinion, is altogether beneath consideration; how Rackett
could be so benighted as to give him The Study--especially after a man
like Henry Hawkridge--passes my comprehension. Did you read a paper of
his, a few months back, in The Wayside, a preposterous rehabilitation of
Elkanah Settle? Ha! Ha! That's what such men are driven to. Elkanah
Settle! And