that, she had a little anecdote to relate. She would not mention names, but what she was about to mention had actually occurred within her own experience, and would prove the utter indifference of even the highest dignitaries of the Church to the vital subject of coiffure. Before she had proceeded a sentence further, Reuben recognised in the Professors's wife the charming young French woman who had redressed the wrongs which he had sustained from his grandfather's scissors, the night before he went to school. That incident was the subject of her anecdote. After the lecture, he hastened to renew his acquaintance with her, and introduced her to his aunt, who thought her so amiable, as well as so pretty and clever, that she could not help purchasing several more little articles on her earnest recommendation; one of them was a carved ivory box, which, to Mrs. Mountjoy's horror, was found, upon examination in the evening, to contain three teeth of a Neapolitan saint, whose very name she had never before heard. This was, probably, the first box of relies introduced into England, in consequence of the stimulus given by the Tractarian movement to that important branch of our Italian com

merce.

Previous to Mr. Medlicott's attendance on the Chatterton lectures, his chamber had been pretty well furnished with lookingglasses, as well as with most other objects of use, ornament, or luxury, by the attention of his fair relative; but Reuben now felt the want of a mirror of the largest size, and did not hesitate to intimate to his aunt how much he desired to have one in which he could see himself at full length, when he practised before it. The deficiency was no sooner mentioned than it was supplied. A new looking-glass, reaching from the floor to the ceiling, was immediately purchased and put up; standing before which, as it were in a pulpit, and recollecting all the lessons of the Professor, and the instructions of Madame, Reuben either theatrically recited some discourse he had committed to memory, or extemporised a sermon of his own from his exhaustless treasury of words and ready fund of all possible embellishments and amplifications of diction. Many a time did the curious and astonished Agatha witness his histrionic exercises through the keyhole; and sometimes the good landlady, passing the door on tip-toe, would pause, attracted by the volumes of sound, and, availing herself of the same convenient little orifice to gaze at the handsome young man, declaiming in his robe of black velvet, yield herself prematurely to the captivations of pulpit oratory.

BOOK THE SIXTH.

"Eloquence, like the fair sex, has too prevailing beauties in it to suffer itself ever to be spoken against. And it is in vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving wherein men find pleasure to be deceived."—Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding.

Socrates. "What if I bring you to a conference

With my own proper goddesses, the Clouds ?"
Strepsiades. ""Tis what I wish devoutly.'

Aristophanes.

ARGUMENT.

A GOODLY catalogue might be made of writers, ancient and modern, Greek and Roman, Italian, Spanish, English, nay even among the gallant French themselves, who, in learned treatises, or pleasant composures-in prose some, and in rhyme others—have inveighed against womankind, down from the fragile Eve, our general mother, to the lowliest slave of the mop and broom amongst her daughters; but what good has ever come of continually abusing and snubbing the female race, or what fruit is to be expected from it? For whether it be true, as one poet expresses it, that they are to be reckoned among the "fair defects of Nature," or ranked with her most exquisite pieces of porcelain, as another will have it, they cannot be denied to form one of the great estates of the world as it is, although fancy is free, of course, to choose any star in the firmament and people it

"With men, as angels, without feminine."

What sort of a place to live in such a planet would be, this is not the place to discuss; but from all we know of all the Utopias hitherto discovered, not excepting the terrestrial little paradise of O'Connorville itself, we have never felt a strong inclination to migrate to any one of them, and it is very doubtful if a world, one hundred and eighty degrees from Venus, would prove more attractive than the rest. To look at woman with the eye of philosophy is not easy, but if you can manage it, you must see at once that there is no use in quarrelling with her, any more than with any other "fait accompli." As we take her individually from the hand of Sir Priest, "for better, for worse," as the rubric phrases it, so we must accept the

entire sex, and accommodate ourselves to our lot as Socratically as possi-
ble. Nor would matters be quite as bad as they are, only that unfortu-
nately the female element in the world is not confined to the precise limits
of the fair sex, but largely intrudes itself into the masculine, in return per-
haps for sundry small loans of their proper attributes, which the lords of
the creation occasionally make to the ladies, as in the case of the Ama-
zons, the Blue-stockings, and the Bloomers. Some writers insist that each
gender is the better for a little alloy of the other; that a touch of the woman
becomes the man, while a little of the man improves the woman, provided
'tis not from his chin the little is borrowed. Now, if we inquire for which
of our gifts we are in all probability most indebted to Eve and her daugh-
ters, we suspect it will be found to be no other than the nimble and eager
exercise of the tongue, which appears beyond controversy to be the
womanly parcel of us, and is, possibly for that reason, so proverbially diffi-
cult to keep in order and subjection. The tongue is essentially of the
feminine gender, let its possessor be of what sex he may; and if in form
it is serpentine, in motion voluble, and in its employment often even double
and venomous, its origin is only more clearly to be traced to the first
beauty that charmed and the first rhetoric that seduced. This is the shrew
that everybody is more or less cursed with, a virago in every man's
mouth, which the wisest cannot at all hours tame like Petruchio. Homer,
not less philosopher than poet, seems to have considered the teeth as a
rampart or line of circumvallations, expressly designed by provident
Nature to check the sallies of this termagant spouse of ours.
same idea seems to have struck our own Shakspeare—

"Within my mouth you have engaoled my tongue,
Doubly portcullised with my teeth and lips."

And the

It is further observable that Homer, to return to him, when his wise Ulysses speaks, describes his voice as issuing not so much from his mouth, the seat of the tongue, as out of his heart or mind-the profounder region of thought and feeling. It is a sorry thing when the tongue is vocal and the understanding mute; when the womanly organ is the only part of the machinery in full work, and "loquax magis quam facundus" is the motto of the age. Perhaps we are to blame the dentists for not looking better after our teeth, which certainly perform but indifferently, in many cases, the duty assigned them by Homer, and are not to be numbered among the defences of the nation. Why, do we not see men in our own days, as there were in Mr. Medlicott's, whose tongues scarce a triple row of elephants' tusks could effectually blockade, though kept in the best repair by all the art of dental surgery?—

"Men who at any time would hang
For th' opportunity t' harangue;
And still their tongues run on the less
Of weight they bear, with greater ease,
And with their everlasting clack
Set all men's ears upon the rack,
With volleys of eternal babble,
And clamour most unanswerable."

Such men, methinks, are as justly to be held women, by reason of this vicious excess of the female quality in them, as the king of Dahomey's

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regiments of guardswomen are to be counted men, notwithstanding the want of whiskers and beards. What correcter judgment, indeed, can we pronounce upon the remorseless race of talkers and speech-makers, this thundering legion" by which the nation is overrun, who are rapidly becoming a distinct function and profession in the state, overpowering common sense, as Niagara drowns all ordinary voices, and threatening with ruin the public interests, especially the dignity and efficiency of parliamentwhat can we say of them more correctly than that they are all tongue, just as a glutton is all stomach; or as Milton describes the unfaithful shepherds of the Church, as mere "mouths,"-a word which would serve our turn as well, did we need it.

CHAPTER L

A GLIMPSE OF GLORY.

A BARREL of gunpowder is as quiet as a barrel of oysters until a spark touches it; then it explodes, and blows the house out of the windows. While Reuben Medlicott was practising and accomplishing himself in the art of rhetoric in Burlington Gardens, expecting nothing less than an early opportunity for displaying his proficiency in it, a political movement was going on in Sussex, which no sooner reached his ears than it set his ambition on fire, and turned everything topsy-turvy.

A public meeting was on the point of being held at Chichester, in defence of the Protestant interest, which at that time was supposed to be in a very delicate and critical situation. At this meeting, when the news of it reached him, Mr. Medlicott, flushed with his recent honours in Leicester-square, determined to make his first experiment in public speaking. The opportunity seemed singularly favourable: the place was benign, the subject was propitious: hundreds of familiar faces would surround him on the platform. He anticipated and dutifully sympathised in his mother's raptures: even his grandfather himself would at least approve his zeal.

Was the Dean's approbation so very certain? Winning and Primrose no sooner heard of their friend's design, than they took a widely different view of the matter. They thought Reuben's intention to take an active part in the proposed meeting the height of imprudence; and we must be excused for devoting a few words to account for their being so decidedly of this opinion.

It was the period when a cabinet, which had hitherto ranged itself in determined resistance to the claims of the Roman Catholics, was understood to be wavering upon that long agitated point. Rumours were abroad that great concessions were on the eve of being made, though whether to reason or to clamour opinions were divided. There were many whispers also afloat affecting individuals. Some of the most eminent men in the nation, particularly in the Church, were beginning to be hinted at in the public journals, as being only too ready to wheel about with the government, not of course without weighty considerations, proportioned to the risks and sacrifices attendant upon all such evolutions. Among those who were most pointedly alluded to in this unpleasant way was the grandfather of our hero-for we may call him a hero with some propriety, now that the Protestant interest at Chichester is about to claim and use him as its champion. For several years, as we have had occasion already to state, Dean Wyndham's elevation to the bench had been spoken of as a probable event, not only on account of his learning and talents, but his strenuous employment of them in support of the policy of the government. Latterly, however, his friends had began to despair of his promotion; and the uninitigated violence of his writings and sermons seemed to be rapidly diminishing his chances with a ministry which was growing milder and more tolerant every day. But now it was confidently stated that the Dean had caught the popular infection like others, and that the mitre, which had been denied him as the preacher of exclusion, was immediately to reward his conversion to the doctrines of liberality. All this was still mere rumour, but it was a rumour that was gaining ground; and whatever men like Winning might privately think of the purity of the Dean's conduct as a public man (should he have really made up his mind to put on a new suit of doctrines and principles in his old age), they were not the less clearly of opinion that Reuben Medlicott (on the eve of entering the Church) could not possibly choose a more unfortunate moment for the public display which he was now meditating.

Reuben, however, was most indignant at the imputations upon his grandfather, which the remonstrances of his friends assumed to be well founded. He had been brought up from the cradle in extreme veneration for the Dean; and as he advanced in years this feeling had increased in proportion to his capability of estimating his grandfather's talents and erudition: a doubt as to his sincerity upon any point (much less upon the great question to