the woman must be unreasonable if she was not flattered by that."

"I thought you knew the sex better," said Winning; "let a woman resemble Minerva ever so much, she will infinitely prefer an allusion to Venus or Juno. However, as you say, the thing must be done, so we may as well do it at once."

Winning wrote his own name and his friend's on a card, and desired Peggy Roberts to hand it to young Mr. Medlicott.

In a moment Reuben was in their arms, and the next moment the two Cambridge men were introduced to the Vicar and his party, with the least possible form and ceremony. Mr. and Mrs. Medlicott now saw Mr. Primrose for the first time, though they had heard a great deal about him from Reuben, who never erred on the side of undervaluing his friends, or praising them penuriously.

Winning saw at a glance that his unlucky remarks in the coach had not yet faded from the memory of Mrs. Medlicott, although recollecting his friendship for Reuben, she was not deficient in any of the civilities, which the occasion required. She took no prominent part, however, for some time in the conversation of the evening, greatly to the disappointment of Primrose. He had only, however, to look round the room to see that there was no lack of subjects for curious observation. He fastened his eye upon the gaunt old Quakeress in an instant; an acquaintance with her fair fat daughter promised infinite satisfaction, even before he heard her laugh; and when he heard the gentleman in the green coat, white buckskins, and red cravat, addressed by the title of Doctor, it completed his enjoyment, and gave him the notion of a cyclopædia of entertainment.

Mary Hopkins made good tea; or if it was not good it was the fault of Jones, Roberts, or Williams, or whatever was the name of the landlord of the Goat. The Vicar talked, and so did the rest, except the Doctor, who was dead tired after his rambles to escape the phrenological lecture, but nobody talked so much as Primrose. He was as lively as Mercutio, or Gratiano, who "talked more nonsense than any man in Venice" of his time. He first tried to draw Mrs. Medlicott out, by touching upon the scientific topics of the day, but failing in that, he laid himself out to be generally amusing, which he had the knack of being, even when he talked of himself, which indeed was the subject upon which he was generally most fluent.

The Vicar desired to know whether either of the Cantabs

were weather-seers; three days in the Goat had contented him, and he had had enough of the wiry music of the old harper in the hall, towards whom he was beginning to cherish the feelings that actuated the "ruthless king."

Primrose affirmed that he was superior to the skyey influences; he was above the clouds, and looked down upon the weather. In fact he preferred wet weather on a tour, particularly when he travelled with Winning, because Winning was too fond of the tops of the mountains for his taste. Another thing was that his luck in travelling was extraordinary. He was always sure to fall in with a charming intellectual party at every inn, and there was nothing like a long dismal wet day for enjoying their company.

The Vicar smiled (well knowing for whom the word "intellectual" had been thrown in), and said that fortune had, at least, been equally kind to himself and his friends in that respect.

Nothing escaped the keen, comic eye of Primrose, which rolled about the room, and penetrated every corner, taking in every object, no matter how minute, that was at all characteristic or illustrative of the company.

There was Mary Hopkins's enormous broom of wild flowers, containing so much of the fox-glove, or digitalis, that Hyacinth thought it must have been collected by the Doctor for his medical uses. Near it lay an equally large truss of dried grasses. Reuben saw Primrose surveying it with intense curiosity, and informed him aside that it was a whim of Mrs. Hopkins, who was a collector of grasses.

"Is she graminivorous?" whispered Hyacinth.

"I can tell you what that is," said the Doctor, pointing to the bundle, "it is the hay that was saved from Dean Wyndham's haggard on the night it was burned down by our clever young friend here."

"My poor Reuben," said his mother, "that will be a standing joke against him as long as he lives."

"It made us very merry in London," said Winning.

"And at Cambridge it kept us in good spirits for a week," said Primrose, who had now come to a table piled with books, and was turning over the Welch Grammar, the Hand-book to Botany, the Outlines of Geology, the Metaphysical Discourses, and the rest of the rather extensive travelling library.

"We have brought a good many books, you see, with us on our journey, Mr. Primrose," said Mrs. Medlicott.

"You are tolerably well provided," replied Hyacinth. "Winning travels with his law library. For my own part, I respect the law too much not to draw the proper distinction between term and vacation."

"Have you made much progress in your life of Hippocrates?" asked Reuben, slyly.

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'Not very much," said Priinrose laughing," but I have not forgotten it, I assure you. I shall certainly buckle to it some of these days, and it will be a great work let me tell you. I am a very hard-working fellow, but I hate labour mortally, that I admit." "You have the more credit for being laborious," said Mrs. Medlicott.

I work because I hate work," continued Primrose, "to have it all over early in life, and be in a position to devote the rest of it to the delicious far-niente. Labour was a curse from the beginning."

"A curse," said the Vicar, "with a blessing in it, as there is in all the divine judgments, if we apprehend them aright."

"Thou hast well spoken, friend Thomas," said Hannah Hopkins, who had all this time been sitting as mute as if she had been at her silent devotions, but hearkening to all that was said with amusingly earnest and profound attention. An argument that subsequently took place on the old question of concentration and diffusion particularly charmed her. Reuben and his mother, supported by Mr. Primrose, were pitted against the Vicar and Winning, the Doctor taking no part, nor even opening his lips, until Winning, overpowered by the fluency of his antagonists, pretended to want his support, on which Doctor Page shook himself and said he was "a physician, not a metaphysician," a pleasantry which put an end to the controversy, not before it was much to be desired.

Mrs. Medlicott, before she retired, invited the Cantabs to breakfast the following morning.

Primrose would have accepted the invitation unconditionally; but Winning, more steady to the plan of their journey, made his acceptance conditional upon the state of the weather in the morning, for if it was possible to travel it was necessary to proceed another stage.

"I almost hope for another wet day," said Primrose, when he and Winning were together again in the double-bedded room they occupied. "I have almost fallen in love with that merry quakeress."

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row will be fair."

"Falling in love is a bad way to rise in the world," said Winning, so for your sake, as well as my own, I trust to-mor "Falling asleep is the wisest course just at present," said Primrose, and he was soon steeped in slumber.

Winning sat down to a volume of "Coke's Institutes," and read until he could read no longer with the discordant music of a harp, which somebody was scraping most barbarously under his windows, converting it into an instrument of actual torture. Going to a window, and looking out, he very soon discovered to whom he was indebted for the interruption of his studies. Reuben was taking a lesson in the national music of Wales from the old harper of the inn.

Another wet day at the Goat-Primrose proposed, at breakfast, to change the sign of the inn from Capricornus to Aquarius. The Doctor wanted to know why Mrs. Hopkins had not given her opinion on the subject of last evening's conversation. Hannah shook her head, and told friend Page, that she loved to hear clever men and clever women arguing, and she did her best to understand what they were arguing about, but they were of ten too deep for her and her Mary, and this was the case, she confessed, with the argument of the preceding night.

"Thy faculties, Hannah," said the Vicar, "are finite, like my own and the Doctor's."

"My Mary and I," said Hannah, "have many an argument together, and we are sometimes not much wiser when we leave off than when we begin."

"A common case in controversies," said the Vicar.

A bee humming in the window set Primrose again going on the subject of himself and his views of study.

"There is no toil," he persisted, "lovely in my sight but the toil of the bee which works among the flowers, or of the man of letters (I mean the belles-lettres, not the black letters) who resembles the bee both in the varied field of his exertions and the nectared sweetness of their results."

"You have certainly taken a very exemplary insect for your model," said the Vicar.

"I observed a bee one day last summer in the Temple Gardens," said Winning, "he seemed very busy for a moment or two, but I suppose he had no great taste for the bitter sweets of the law, for he soon flew away up the river towards Richmond, and I never saw him in the Temple Garden again. That was Primrose's model bee, I suspect."

"Mary, can st thou repeat Letitia Barbauld's lines on the bee?" said Hannah Hopkins.

Mary obeyed and repeated the stanzas, happily not very numerous, with tolerable accuracy, all but one, in which Reuben most good-naturedly and condescendingly assisted her.

The Cambridge men were exceedingly diverted.

"Thou and Mary used to learn them together, when thou wert my scholar," said Hannah Hopkins, addressing Reuben. "He learned many a useful lesson from thee, Hannah,” said the Vicar.

"That I did, sir," said Reuben.

“Thank thee for saying so," said Hannah, "thou more than rewardest all my trouble-why dost thou laugh, Mary ?"

Mary Hopkins had burst out into one of her constitutional and infectious fits of most unquakerly mirth. Primrose was in raptures with her.

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Because, mother, thou talkest of the trouble that Reuben Medlicott gave thee, as if he had been one of thy refractory scholars."

"Great men," said Primrose, "have been formed under the tuition of the fair sex; the great poet Pindar, for example, was the pupil of the charming poetess Corinna."

Winning now saw a fair opportunity for regaining the lost paradise of Mrs. Medlicott's favour, and adroitly availed himself of it..

"And the Gracchi," he said, "they were still more fortunate in having a woman of learning and genius for their mother." "In these dull days Cornelia would have been called a bluestocking," said Primrose.

"The Romans understood some things much better than we do," said Winning, with consummate gravity.

Mary Hopkins, however, turned laughing to Reuben. "Thou seest," she said, "all that is expected from thee, thou shouldest be both a Pindar and a Gracchus, according to what thy friends say."

"Thou art thy mother's jewel at all events," said old Hannah. The Vicar laughed heartily at the speeches of both mother and daughter, but what chiefly amused him was the notion of his wife being compared to the celebrated Roman matron, and Mrs. Hopkins bearing the laurelled name of Corinna.

Winning stood almost as high after this dialogue in Mrs. Medlicott's favour as Hyacinth Primrose. The rest of the day