be a scholar, and his little pardonable display and
ostentation of his Greek only brings him nearer to us, who have none of
his genius, and do not approach him but in his faults. They make him
more human; one loves him for them as he loves Squire Western, with all
his failings. Delightful, immortal Squire!

It was not he, it was another Tory Squire that called out "Hurray for old
England! Twenty thousand honest Frenchmen are landed in Sussex." But it
_was_ Western that talked of "One Acton, that the Story Book says was
turned into a Hare, and his own Dogs kill'd 'un, and eat 'un." And have
you forgotten the popular discussion (during the Forty-five) of the
affairs of the Nation, which, as Squire Western said, "all of us
understand"? Said the Puppet-Man, "I don't care what Religion comes,
provided the Presbyterians are not uppermost, for they are enemies to
Puppet-Shows." But the Puppet-Man had no vote in 1745. Now, to our
comfort, he can and does exercise the glorious privilege of the
franchise.

There is no room in this epistle for Fielding's glorious gallery of
characters--for Lady Bellaston, who remains a lady in her debaucheries,
and is therefore so unlike our modern representative of her class, Lady
Betty, in Miss Broughton's "Doctor Cupid;" for Square, and Thwackum, and
Trulliber, and the jealous spite of Lady Booby, and Honour, that undying
lady's maid, and Partridge, and Captain Blifil and Amelia, the fair and
kind and good!

It is like the whole world of that old England--the maids of the Inn, the
parish clerk, the two sportsmen, the hosts of the taverns, the beaux, the
starveling authors--all alive; all (save the authors) full of beef and
beer; a cudgel in every fist, every man ready for a brotherly bout at
fisticuffs. What has become of it, the lusty old militant world? What
will become of us, and why do we prefer to Fielding--a number of
meritorious moderns? Who knows? But do not let _us_ prefer anything to
our English follower of Cervantes, our wise, merry, learned Sancho,
trudging on English roads, like Don Quixote on the paths of Spain.

But I cannot convert you. You will turn to some story about store-clerks
and summer visitors. Such is his fate who argues with the fair.

LONGFELLOW

_To Walter Mainwaring, Esq., Lothian College, Oxford_.

My dear Mainwaring,--You are very good to ask me to come up and listen to
a discussion, by the College Browning Society, of the minor char