d his
wife; but the matter is too rich not to require a chapter to itself.

CHAPTER XI--THE OLD RADICAL

'This very dirty man, with his very dirty face,
Would do any dirty act, which would get him a place.'

Some time ago the writer was set upon by an old Radical and his wife; but
before he relates the manner in which they set upon him, it will be as
well to enter upon a few particulars tending to elucidate their reasons
for doing so.

The writer had just entered into his eighteenth year, when he met at the
table of a certain Anglo-Germanist {372a} an individual apparently
somewhat under thirty, of middle stature, a thin and weaselly figure, a
sallow complexion, a certain obliquity of vision, and a large pair of
spectacles. This person, who had lately come from abroad, and had
published a volume of translations, {372b} had attracted some slight
notice in the literary world, and was looked upon as a kind of lion in a
small provincial capital. After dinner he argued a great deal, spoke
vehemently against the Church, and uttered the most desperate Radicalism
that was perhaps ever heard, saying he hoped that in a short time there
would not be a king or queen in Europe, and inveighing bitterly against
the English aristocracy, and against the Duke of Wellington in
particular, whom he said, if he himself was ever president of an English
republic--an event which he seemed to think by no means improbable--he
would hang for certain infamous acts of profligacy and bloodshed which he
had perpetrated in Spain. Being informed that the writer was something
of a philologist, to which character the individual in question laid
great pretensions, he came and sat down by him, and talked about
languages and literature. The writer, who was only a boy, was a little
frightened at first, but, not wishing to appear a child of absolute
ignorance, he summoned what little learning he had, and began to blunder
out something about the Celtic languages and their literature, and asked
the Lion who he conceived Finn Ma Coul to be? and whether he did not
consider the 'Ode to the Fox,' by Red Rhys of Eryry, to be a masterpiece
of pleasantry? Receiving no answer to these questions from the Lion,
who, singular enough, would frequently, when the writer put a question to
him, look across the table and flatly contradict some one who was talking
to some other person, the writer dropped the Celtic languages and
literature, and asked him