with the
stupid AEneas.

"Noctem vario sermone _trahebat_--it was a sad _drag_. It must have
become very tiresome, a little while before that, when ill-mannered
Bitias drank up all the wine, and buried his face in the cup, "pleno se
proluit auro." And they had been obliged to resort to singing, always
the refuge from the visible awkwardness of _nothing to say_. And here I
cannot but remark, Eusebius, what dull things their songs must have been
on natural philosophy, sun, moon, and stars--songs, Virgil tells you,
edited by the old Astronomer-general Atlas. But as this was before the
foundation of Rome, they had not that variety for their selection,
which was as much in fashion afterwards in Rome as Moore's Melodies in
England, as we learn from Mr Macaulay, and his version and edition of
the "Lays." They had no piccolo pianofortes in those days, or they would
have had something lighter than the Lays, as the better after-supper
Poet calls it--a

"Something more exquisite still."

But I am apparently, Eusebius, leaving the Curate to sleep or to
meditate upon his own unhappy condition while I thus turn the current of
my talk upon you. Unhappy condition, did I say? He seems to bear it
wonderfully lightly; and once or twice, when the subject has been
mentioned, indulged in an irreverend laugh. Now, I know you will ask how
a laugh can be irreverend. Don't you know the world well enough,
Eusebius, to know, that before a very great number of men, women, and
children, a curate must not laugh, dare not laugh--blessed indeed, and
divested of the wretched rags of humanity, if he _cannot_ laugh. None
but a Bishop, or a Dean, who, in the eyes of the many, is a kind of
extra-parochial nonentity, can really, in these times of severe
reprobation for trifling peccadillos, afford to laugh; and they had
better do it in private, and with aprons off--never before the Chapter,
who all, themselves, laugh in private. Man, you know, is the only
risible creature; but a Curate must begin to know, from the moment he
has put on his surplice, that he is to discard at once, and for ever,
this human and irreverend instinct. Had you lived in the triumphal days
of the Puritans, what penalties would you not have had to undergo, what
buffetings and duckings, ere you could finally have overcome your strong
natural wicked propensity, and have sobered down, and riveted in iron
gravity and moroseness those flexible, those mockingly flexible features
of y