vellers
meant the kind of man to which it refers. Chaucer certainly meant the
Pardonere to be a humbug, living on the credulity of the people. After
describing the sham reliques he carried, he says:

But with these relikes whawne that he found
A poure personne dwelling up on lond
Upon a day he gat him more monnie
Than that the personne got in monthes time,
And thus, with fained flattering and japes
He made the personne, and the people, his apes.

And the worthy Watts (founder of the charity) may have had these very
lines in his mind when he excluded such a man.

When I last heard from my boy he was coming to you, and was full of
delight and dignity. My midshipman has just been appointed to the
_Bristol_, on the West Coast of Africa, and is on his voyage out to join
her. I wish it was another ship and another station. She has been
unlucky in losing men.

Kindest regard from all my house to yours.

Faithfully yours ever.

[Sidenote: M. Charles Fechter.]

GAD'S HILL, _Tuesday, Sept. 4th, 1866._

MY DEAR FECHTER,

This morning I received the play to the end of the telegraph scene, and
I have since read it twice.

I clearly see the _ground_ of Mr. Boucicault's two objections; but I do
not see their _force_.

First, as to the writing. If the characters did not speak in a terse and
homely way, their idea and language would be inconsistent with their
dress and station, and they would lose, as characters, before the
audience. The dialogue seems to be exactly what is wanted. Its
simplicity (particularly in Mr. Boucicault's part) is often very
effective; and throughout there is an honest, straight-to-the-purpose
ruggedness in it, like the real life and the real people.

Secondly, as to the absence of the comic element. I really do not see
how more of it could be got into the story, and I think Mr. Boucicault
underrates the pleasant effect of his own part. The very notion of a
sailor, whose life is not among those little courts and streets, and
whose business does not lie with the monotonous machinery, but with the
four wild winds, is a relief to me in reading the play. I am quite
confident of its being an immense relief to the audience when they see
the sailor before them, with an entirely different bearing, action,
dress, complexion even, from the rest of the men. I would make him the
f