ury than
this. You may as well cite Addison and Sir Roger de Coverley."

_Pisistratus_.--"_Tremaine_ and _De Vere_."

_Mr. Caxton_.--"Nothing can be more graceful, nor more unlike what I
mean. The Pales and Terminus I wish you to put up in the fields are
familiar images, that you may cut out of an oak tree--not beautiful
marble statues on porphyry pedestals twenty feet high."

_Pisistratus_.--"Miss Austin; Mrs. Gore in her masterpiece of _Mrs.
Armytage_; Mrs. Marsh, too; and then (for Scottish manners) Miss
Ferrier!"

_Mr. Caxton_, growing cross.--"Oh, if you cannot treat on bucolics but
what you must hear some Virgil or other cry 'Stop thief,' you deserve to
be tossed by one of your own 'short-horns.'--(Still more
contemptuously)--I am sure I don't know why we spend so much money on
sending our sons to school to learn Latin, when that Anchronism of yours,
Mrs. Caxton, can't even construe a line and a half of Phaedrus. Phaedrus,
Mrs. Caxton--a book which is in Latin what Goody Two Shoes is in the
vernacular!"

_Mrs. Caxton_, alarmed and indignant.--"Fie, Austin! I am sure you can
construe Phaedrus, dear!"

Pisistratus prudently preserves silence.

_Mr. Caxton_.--"I'll try him--

"'Sua cuique quum sit animi cogitatio
Colorque proprius.'

"What does that mean?"

_Pisistratus_, smiling.--"That every man has some coloring matter within
him, to give his own tinge to--"

"His own novel," interrupted my father! "_Contentus peragis_."

During the latter part of this dialogue, Blanche had sewn together three
quires of the best Bath paper, and she now placed them on a little table
before me, with her own inkstand and steel pen.

My mother put her finger to her lip, and said, "Hush!" my father returned
to the cradle of the AEsar; Captain Roland leant his cheek on his hand,
and gazed abstractedly on the fire; Mr. Squills felt into a placid doze;
and, after three sighs that would have melted a heart of stone, I rushed
into--MY NOVEL.

* * * * *

CHAPTER II.

"There has never been occasion to use them since I have been in the
Parish," said Parson Dale.

"What does that prove?" quoth the Squire sharply, and looking the Parson
full in the face.

"Prove!" repeated Mr. Dale--with a smile of benign, yet too conscious
superiority--"What does experience prove?"

"That your forefathers were great blockheads, and that their descendant
is not a whit the wiser."

"Squire," replie