t may be safely affirmed," he observes, "that a
conciliatory reply will frequently allay irritation in an angry
assailant;" and he entertains us with a really good story of a choleric
old gentleman who challenged him once for poaching on his grounds, but
who was gradually talked over till he asked him to dinner. If our friend
has been a wit in his youth, the propensity to jocularity still
survives; but the jests are generally such as you meet with in the very
earliest editions of Mr Joseph Miller, though, for the sake of variety,
they are often ascribed to the late facetious Mr Joseph Jekyll, or Mr
Henry Erskine, or to some other of the Fogie's early contemporaries, if
indeed the Fogie himself is not the hero of the tale.

It is unnecessary to say that the Fogie is always an amiable and almost
always a happy person. "Happiness," says the judicious Paley, "is found
with the purring cat no less than with the playful kitten; in the
arm-chair of dozing age, as well as in either the sprightliness of the
dance, or the animation of the chase." The Fogie is generally attached
in moderation to the pleasures of the table, and is a Conservative and
Protectionist in his politics; though, since the introduction of Sir
Robert Peel's last measure, several of the class have been rubbing up
their Adam Smith, and quoting some of the enlightened maxims of
free-trade which they used to hear at the Speculative Society, or in
some other arena of juvenile discussion.

It is a proud thing to remember that the delineation of the Fogie has
employed the genius of the greatest poets. The character of Nestor in
the _Iliad_ must be regarded as one of the masterpieces of the Homeric
gallery. The eloquent drivel that distils from his tongue, the length
and general inapplicability of his narratives, the judicious and
imposing triteness of his counsels, the vigorous imbecility of his
exhortations--all reveal the heroic Fogie in proportions suitable to the
other colossal figures with which he is surrounded. In Polonius, again,
Shakspeare has given us a different form of the species, equally perfect
in its kind. The tenderness of the old man's heart, the sagacity of his
discoveries, the self-pleasing estimate of his own importance, and the
sounding vacuity of his moral maxims, afford a model by which, in all
time coming, the courtly or paternal Fogie may regulate his life and
conversation, though, we trust, he may generally meet with a happier
terminatio