by side, as if they had been old acquaintances.

It may have happened to many of our readers, as it has done to
ourselves, to be thrown by accident into society with some individual
whose claims to what is called a _serious_ character stand considerably
higher than our own, and with whom, therefore, we have conceived
ourselves likely to spend our time in a very stiff and constrained
manner; while, on the other hand, our destined companion may have
apprehended some disgust from the supposed levity and thoughtless gaiety
of a disposition that when we, with that urbanity and good-humour
which is our principal characteristic, have accommodated ourself to our
companion, by throwing as much seriousness into our conversation as our
habits will admit, he, on the other hand, moved by our liberal
example, hath divested his manners of part of their austerity; and our
conversation has, in consequence, been of that pleasant texture, betwixt
the useful and agreeable, which best resembles "the fairy-web of night
and day," usually called in prose the twilight. It is probable
both parties may, on such occasions, have been the better for their
encounter, even if it went no farther than to establish for the time a
community of feeling between men, who, separated more perhaps by
temper than by principle, are too apt to charge each other with profane
frivolity on the one hand, or fanaticism on the other.

It fared thus in Peveril's walk with Bridgenorth, and in the
conversation which he held with him.

Carefully avoiding the subject on which he had already spoken, Major
Bridgenorth turned his conversation chiefly on foreign travel, and on
the wonders he had seen in distant countries, and which he appeared to
have marked with a curious and observant eye. This discourse made the
time fly light away; for although the anecdotes and observations thus
communicated were all tinged with the serious and almost gloomy spirit
of the narrator, they yet contained traits of interest and of wonder,
such as are usually interesting to a youthful ear, and were particularly
so to Julian, who had, in his disposition, some cast of the romantic and
adventurous.

It appeared that Bridgenorth knew the south of France, and could tell
many stories of the French Huguenots, who already began to sustain those
vexations which a few years afterwards were summed up by the revocation
of the Edict of Nantz. He had even been in Hungary, for he spoke as from
personal kno