Gryll Grange

          Opinion governs all mankind,
          Like the blind leading of the blind:--
          And like the world, men's jobbernoles
          Turn round upon their ears the poles,
          And what they're confidently told
          By no sense else can be control'd.
            --Butler.*

    Ego sic semper et ubique vixi, ut ultimam quamque lucem, tamquam non redituram, consumerem.
            --Petronius Arbiter. [Sat., XCIX. 1]

    Always and everywhere I have so lived, that I might consume the passing light, as if it were not to return.

"PALESTINE SOUP!" said the Reverend Doctor Opimian, dining with his friend Squire Gryll; "a curiously complicated misnomer. We have an excellent old vegetable, the artichoke, of which we eat the head; we have another of subsequent introduction, of which we eat the root, and which we also call artichoke, because it resembles the first in flavour, although, me judice, a very inferior affair. This last is a species of the helianthus, or sunflower genus of the Syungenesia frustranea class of plants. It is therefore a girasol, or turn-to-the-sun. From this girasol we have made Jerusalem, and from the Jerusalem artichoke we make Palestine soup."

        MR. GRYLL.
A very good thing, Doctor.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
A very good thing; but a palpable misnomer.

        MR. GRYLL.
I am afraid we live in a world of misnomers, and of a worse kind than this. In my little experience I have found that a gang of swindling bankers is a respectable old firm; that men who sell their votes to the highest bidder, and want only "the protection of the ballot" to sell the promise of them to both parties, are a free and independent constituency; that a man who successively betrays everybody that trusts him, and abandons every principle he ever professed, is a great statesman, and a Conservative, forsooth, à nil conservando; that schemes for breeding pestilence are sanitary improvements; that the test of intellectual capacity is in swalIow, and not in digestion; that the art of teaching everything, except what will be of use to the recipient, is national education; and that a change for the worse is reform. Look across the Atlantic. A Sympathizer would seem to imply a certain degree of benevolent feeling. Nothing of the kind. It signifies a ready-made accomplice in any species of political villany. A Know-Nothing would seem to imply a liberal self-diffidence--on the scriptural principle that the beginning of knowledge is to know that thou art ignorant. No such thing. It implies furious political dogmatism, enforced by bludgeons and revolvers. A Locofoco is the only intelligible term: a fellow that would set any place on fire to roast his own eggs. A Filibuster is a pirate under national colours; but I suppose the word in its origin implies something virtuous: perhaps a friend of humanity.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
More likely a friend of roaring--Philobóstrés--in the sense in which roaring is used by our old dramatists; for which see Middleton's Roaring Girl, and the commentators thereon. *

        MR. GRYLL.
While we are on the subject of misnomers, what say you to the wisdom of Parliament?

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Why, sir, I do not call that a misnomer. The term wisdom is used in a parliamentary sense. The wisdom of Parliament is a wisdom sui generis. It is not like any other wisdom. It is not the wisdom of Socrates, nor the wisdom of Solomon. It is the wisdom of Parliament. It is not easily analysed or defined; but it is very easily understood. It has achieved wonderful things by itself, and still more when Science has come to its aid. Between them, they have poisoned the Thames, and killed the fish in the river. A little further development of the same wisdom and science will complete the poisoning of the air, and kill the dwellers on the banks. It is pleasant that the precious effluvium has been brought so efficiently under the Wisdom's own wise nose. Thereat the nose, like Trinculo's, has been in great indignation.* The Wisdom has ordered the Science to do something. The Wisdom does not know what, nor the Science either. But the Wisdom has empowered the Science to spend some millions of money; and this, no doubt, the Science will do. When the money has been spent, it will be found that the something has been worse than nothing. The Science will want more money to do some other something, and the Wisdom will grant it. Redit labor actus in orbem.* But you have got on moral and political ground. My remark was merely on a perversion of words, of which we have an inexhaustible catalogue.

        MR. GRYLL.
Whatever ground we take, Doctor, there is one point common to most of these cases: the word presents an idea, which does not belong to the subject, critically considered. Palestine Soup is not more remote from the true Jerusalem, than many an honourable friend from public honesty and honour. However, Doctor, what say you to a glass of old Madeira, which I really believe is what it is called?

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
In vino veritas. I accept with pleasure.

        MISS GRYLL.
You and my uncle, Doctor, get up a discussion on everything that presents itself; dealing with your theme like a series of variations in music. You have run half round the world àpropos of the soup. What say you to the fish?

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Premising that this is a remarkably fine slice of salmon, there is much to be said about fish: but not in the way of misnomers. Their names are single and simple. Perch, sole, cod, eel, carp, char, skate, tench, trout, brill, bream, pike, and many others, plain monosyllables: salmon, dory, turbot, gudgeon, lobster, whitebait, grayling, haddock, mullet, herring, oyster, sturgeon, flounder, turtle, plain dissyllables: only two trisyllables worth naming, anchovy and mackerel; unless any one should be disposed to stand up for halibut, which for my part I have excommunicated.

        MR. GRYLL.
I agree with you on that point; but I think vou have named one or two, that might as well keep it company.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
I do not think I have named a single unpresentable fish.

        MR. GRYLL.
Bream, Doctor: there is not much to be said for bream.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
On the contrary, sir, I think there is much to be said for him. In the first place, there is the authority of the monastic brotherhoods, who are universalIy admitted to have been connoisseurs in fish, and in the mode of preparing it; and you will find bream pie set down as a prominent item of luxurious living in the indictments prepared against them at the dissolution of the monasteries. The work of destruction was rather too rapid, and I fear the receipt is lost. But he can still be served up as an excellent stew, provided always that he is full-grown, and has swum all his life in clear running water. I call everything fish that seas, lakes, and rivers furnish to cookery; though, scientifically, a turtle is a reptile, and a lobster an insect. Fish, Miss Gryll--I could discourse to you on fish by the hour: but for the present I will forbear: as Lord Curryfin is coming down to Thornback Bay, to lecture the fishermen on fish and fisheries, and to astonish them all with the science of their art. You will, no doubt, be curious to hear him. There will be some reserved seats.

        MISS GRYLL.
I shall be very curious to hear him, indeed. I have never heard a lecturing lord. The fancy of lords and gentlemen to lecture everybody on everything, everywhere, seems to me something very comical; but perhaps it is something very serious, gracious in the lecturer, and instructive to the audience. Ishall be glad to be cured of my unbecoming propensity to laugh, whenever I hear of lecturing lord.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
I hope, Miss Gryll, you will not laugh at Lord Curryfin: for you may be assured, nothing will be farther from his lordship's intension than to say anything in the slightest degree droll.

        MR. GRYLL.
Doctor Johnson was astonished at the mania for lectures, even. in: his day, when there were no lecturing lords. .He thought little was to be learned from lectures, unless where, as in chemistry, the subject required illustration by experiment. Now, if your lord is going to exhibit experiments, in the art of cooking fish, with. specimens in su:fficient number for all his audience to taste, I have no doubt his lecture will be well attended, and a repetition earnestly desired.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
I am afraid the lecture will not have the aid of such pleasant adventitious attractions. It will be a pure scientific exposition, carefully classified, under the several divisions and subdivisions of Ichthyology, Entomology, Herpetology, and Conchology. But I agree with Doctor Johnson, that little is to be learned from lectures. For the most part, those who do not already understand the subject will not understand the lecture, and those who do will learn nothing from it. The latter will hear many things they would like to contradict, which the bienséance of the lecture-room does not allow. I do not comprehend how people can find amusement in lectures. I should much prefer a tenson of the twelfth century, when two or three masters of the Gai Saber* discussed questions of love and chivalry.

        MISS GRYLL.
I am afraid, Doctor, our age is too prosy for that sort of thing. We have neither wit enough, nor poetry enough, to furnish the disputants. I can conceive a state of society in which such tensons would form a pleasant winter evening amusement: but that state of society is not ours.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Well, Miss Gryll, I should like, some winter evening, to challenge you to a tenson, and your uncle should be umpire. I think you have wit enough by nature, and I have poetry enough by memory, to supply a fair portion of the requisite materials, without assuming an absolute mastery of the Gai Saber.

        MISS GRYLL.
I shall accept the challenge, Doctor. The wit on one side will, I am afraid, be very shortcoming; but the poetry on the other will no doubt be abundant.

        MR. GRYLL.
Suppose, Doctor, you were to get up a tenson a little more relative to our own wise days. Spirit-rapping, for example, is a fine field. Nec pueri credunt. . . Sed tu vera puta.* You might go beyond the limits of a tenson. There is ample scope for an Aristophanic comedy. In the contest between the Just and the Unjust in the Clouds, and in other scenes of Aristophanes, you have ancient specimens tof something very like tensons, except that Love has not much share in them. Let us for a moment suppose this same spirit-rapping to be true--dramatically so, at least. Let us fit up a stage for the purpose: make the invoked spirits visible as well as audible: and calling before us some of the illustrious of former days, ask them what they think of us and our doings? Of our astounding progress of intellect? Our march of mind ? Our higher tone of morality? Our vast diffusion of education? Our art of choosing the most unfit man by competitive examination?

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
You had better not bring on many of them at once, nor ask many similar questions, or the chorus of ghostly laughter will be overwhelming. I imagine the answer would be something like Hamlet's: "You yourselves, sirs, shall be as wise as we were, if, like crabs, you could go backward."* It is thought something wonderful that uneducated persons should believe in witchcraft in the nineteenth century: as if educated persons did not believe in grosser follies: such as this same spirit-rapping, unknown tongues, clairvoyance, table-turning, and all sorts of fanatical impositions, having for the present their climax in Mormonism. Herein all times are alike. There is nothing too monstrous for human credulity. I like the notion of the Aristophanic comedy. But it would require a numerous company, especially as the chorus is indispensable. The tenson may be carried on by two.

        MR. GRYLL.
I do not see why we should not have both.

        MISS GRYLL.
Oh pray, Doctor! let us have the comedy. We hope to have a houseful at Christmas, and I think we may get it up well, chorus and all. I should so like to hear what my great ancestor, Gryllus, thinks of us: and Homer, and Dante, and Shakspeare, and Richard the First, and Oliver Cromwell.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
A very good dramatis personæ. With these, and the help of one or two Athenians and Romans, we may arrive at a tolerable judgment on our own immeasurable superiority to everything that has gone before us.

  Before we proceed further, we will give some account of our interlocutors.

  FORTUNA SPONDET MULTA MULTIS PRAESTAT NEMINI VIVE IN DIES ET HORAS NAM PROPRIUM EST NIHIL.
            Marmor vetus apud Feam, ad Hor. Epist. I. ii, 23.*

              Fortune makes many promises to many,
            Keeps them to none. Live to the days and hours,
            For nothing is your own.

GREGORY GRYLL, Esq., of Gryll Grange in Hampshire, on the borders of the New Forest, in the midst of a park which was a little forest in itself, reaching nearly to the sea, and well stocked with deer, having a large outer tract, where a numerous light-rented and well-conditioned tenantry fattened innumerable pigs, considered himself well located for what he professed to be, Epicuri de grege porcus,* and held, though he found it difficult to trace the pedigree, that he was lineally descended from the ancient and illustrious Gryllus, who maintained against Ulysses the superior happiness of the life of other animals to that of the life of man.*   It might seem, that to a man who traced his ancestry from the Palace of Circe, the first care would be the continuance of his ancient race; but a wife presented to him the forethought of a perturbation of his equanimity, which he never could bring himself to encounter. He liked to dine well, and withal to dine quietly, and to have quiet friends at his table, with whom he could discuss questions which might afford ample room for pleasant conversation and none for acrimonious dispute. He feared that a wife would interfere with his dinner, his company, and his after-dinner bottle of port. For the perpetuation of his name, he relied on an orphan niece, whom he had brought up from a child, who superintended his household, and sate at the head of his table. She was to be his heiress, and her husband was to take his name. He left the choice to her, but reserved to himself a veto if he should think the aspirant unworthy of the honourable appellation.
  The young lady had too much taste, feeling, and sense to be likely to make a choice which her uncle would not approve; but time, as it rolled on, foreshadowed a result which the Squire had not anticipated. Miss Gryll did not seem likely to make any choice at all. The atmosphere of quiet enjoyment in which she had grown up seemed to have steeped her feelings in its own tranquillity; and still more, the affection which she felt for her uncle, and the conviction that, though he had always premeditated her marriage, her departure from his house would be the severest blow that fate could inflict on him, led her to postpone what she knew must be an evil day to him, and might peradventure not be a good one to her.
  "Oh, the ancient name of Gryll!" sighed the Squire to himself. "What if it should pass away in the nineteenth century, after having lived from the time of Circe!"
  Often indeed, when he looked at her at the head of his table, the star of his little circle, joyous herself and the source of joy in others, he thought the actual state of things admitted no change for the better, and the perpetuity of the old name became a secondary consideration; but though the purpose was dimmed in the evening it usually brightened in the morning. In the meantime the young lady had many suitors, who were permitted to plead their cause, though they made little apparent progress.
  Several young gentlemen of fair promise, seemingly on the point of being accepted, had been, each in his turn, suddenly and summarily dismissed. Why, was the young lady's secret. If it were known, it would be easy, she said, in these days of artificial manners, to counterfeit the presence of the qualities she liked, and, still more easy, the absence of the qualities she disliked. There was sufficient diversity in the characters of the rejected to place conjecture at fault, and Mr. Gryll began to despair.
  The uncle and niece had come to a clear understanding on this subject. He might present to her attention any one whom he might deem worthy to be her suitor, and she might reject the suitor without assigning a reason for so doing. In this way several had appeared, and passed away like bubbles on a stream.
  Was the young lady over fastidious, or were none among the presented worthy, or had that which was to touch her heart not yet appeared?
  Mr. Gryll was the godfather of his niece, and to please him, she had been called Morgana. He had had some thoughts of calling her Circe, but acquiesced in the name of a sister enchantress, who had worked out her own idea of a beautiful garden, and exercised similar power over the minds and forms of men.*

        Tegge pneumonas oinó to gar astron peritelletai:
        A d' óra chalepa, panta de dipsa hupo kaumatos.
            --Alcaeus. *

        Moisten your lungs with wine. The dog-star's sway
        Returns, and all things thirst beneath his ray.

    FALERNUM OPIMIANUM ANNORUM CE:NTUM.

  Heu! heu! inquit Trimalchio, ergo diutius vivit vinum quam homuncio!
  Quare tegge pneumenas faciamus. Vita vinum est.
            --Petronius Arbiter. [Sat., XXXIV. 7]

    FALERNIAN OPIMIAN WINE! AN HUNDRED YEARS OLD.

  Alas! Alas! exclaimed Trimalchio. Thus wine lives longer than man!
  Wherefore, let us sing "moisten your lungs." Wine is life.

WORDSWORTH'S question, in his Poet's Epitaph,

      Art thou a man of purple cheer,
      A rosy man, right plump to see?

might have been answered in the affirmative by the Reverend Doctor Opimian. The worthy divine dwelt in an agreeably situated vicarage, on the outskirts of the New Forest. A good living, a comfortable petrimony, a moderate dowry with his wife placed him sufficiently above the cares of the world to enable him to gratify all his tastes without minute calculations of cost. His tastes in fact were four: a good library, a good dinner, a pleasant garden, and rural walks. He was an athlete in pedestrianism. He took no pleasure in riding, either on horseback or in a carriage; but he kept a brougham for the service of Mrs. Opimian, and for his own occasional use in dining out.
  Mrs. Opimian was domestic. The care of the Doctor had supplied her with the best books on cookery, to which his own inventive genius and the kindness of friends had added a large and always increasing manuscript volume. The lady studied them carefully, and by diligent superintendence left the Doctor nothing to desire in the service of his table. His cellar was well stocked with a selection of the best vintages, under his own especial charge. In all its arrangements his house was a model of order and comfort; and the whole establishment partook of the genial physiognomy of the master. From the master and mistress to the cook, and from the cook to the tom cat, there was about the inhabitants of the vicarage a sleek and purring rotundity of face and figure that denoted community of feelings, habits, and diet; each in its kind, of course, for the Doctor had his port, the cook her ale, and the cat his milk, in sufficiently liberal allowance. In the morning, while Mrs. Opimian found ample occupation in the details of her household duties and the care of her little family, the Doctor, unless he had predestined the whole day to an excursion, studied in his library. In the afternoon he walked; in the evening he dined; and after dinner read to his wife and family, or heard his children read to him. This was his home life. Now and then he dined out; more frequently than at any other place with his friend and neighbour Mr. Gryll, who entirely sympathized with him in his taste for a good dinner.
  Beyond the limits of his ordinary but within those of his occasional range was a solitary round tower on an eminence backed with wood, which had probably in old days been a landmark for hunters; but having in modern days no very obvious use, was designated, as many such buildings are, by the name of the Folly. The country people called it "the Duke's Folly," though who the Duke in question was nobody could tell. Tradition had dropped his name.
  One fine Midsummer day, with a southerly breeze and a cloudless sky, the Doctor, having taken an early breakfast, in the process of which he had considerably reduced the altitude of a round of beef, set out with a good stick in his hand and a Newfoundland dog at his heels for one of his longest walks, such as he could only take in the longest days.
  Arriving at the Folly, which he had not visited for a long time, he was surprised to find it enclosed, and having at the back the novelty of a covered passage, built of the same grey stone as the tower itself. This passage passed away into the wood at the back, whence was ascending a wreath of smoke which immediately recalled to him the dwelling of Circe.* Indeed, the change before him had much the air of enchantment; and the Circean similitude was not a little enhanced by the antique masonry,* and the expanse of sea which was visible from the eminence. He leaned over the gate, repeated aloud the lines of the Odyssey, and fell into a brown study, from which he was aroused by the approach of a young gentleman from within the enclosure.
  "I beg your pardon, sir," said the Doctor, "but my curiosity is excited by what I see here; and if you do not think it impertinent, and would inform me how these changes have come about, I should be greatly obliged."
  Most willingly, sir," said the other; "but if you will walk in, and see what has been done, the obligation will be mine."
  The Doctor readily accepted the proposal. The stranger led the way, across an open space in the wood, to a circular hall, from each side of which a wide passage led, on the left hand to the tower, and on the right to the new building, which was so masked by the wood, as not to be visible except from within the glade. It was a square structure of plain store, much in the same style as that of the tower.
  The young gentleman took the left-hand passage, and introduced the Doctor to the lower floor of the tower.
  "I have divided the tower," he observed, "into three rooms: one on each floor. This is the dining-room; above it is my bedroom; above it again is my library. The prospect is good from all the floors, but from the library it is most extensive, as you look over the woods far away into the open sea."
  "A noble dining-room," said the Doctor. "The height is well proportioned to the diameter. That circular table well becomes the form of the room, and gives promise of a fine prospect in its way."
  "I hope you will favour me by forming a practical judgment on the point," said his new acquaintance, as he led the way to the upper floor, the Doctor marvelling at the extreme courtesy with which he was treated. "This building," thought he, "might belong to the age of chivalry, and my young host might be Sir Calidore himself." But the library brought him back to other days.
  The walls were covered with books, the upper portion accessible by a gallery, running entirely round the apartment. The books of the lower circle were all classical; those of the upper, English, Italian, and French, with a few volumes in Spanish.
  The young gentleman took down a Homer, and pointed out to the Doctor the passage which, as he leaned over the gate, he had repeated from the Odyssey. This accounted to the Doctor for the deference shown to him. He saw at once into the Greek sympathy.
  "You have a great collection of books," said the Doctor.
  "I believe," said the young gentleman, "I have all the best books in the languages I cultivate. Horne Tooke says: 'Greek, Latin, Italian, and French, are unfortunately the usual bounds of an English scholar's acquisition.'* I think any scholar fortunate whose acquisition extends so far. These languages and our own comprise, I believe, with a few rare exceptions, all the best books in the world. I may add Spanish, for the sake of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderon. It was a dictum of Porson, that 'Life is too short to learn German;' meaning, I apprehend, not that it is too difficult to be acquired within the ordinary space of life, but that there is nothing in it to compensate for the portion of life bestowed on its acquirement, however little that may be."*
  The Doctor was somewhat puzzled what to say. He had some French and more Italian, being fond of romances of chivalry; and in Greek and Latin he thought himself a match for any man; but he was more occupied with speculations on the position and character of his new acquaintance, than on the literary opinions he was enunciating. He marvelled to find a young man, rich enough to do what he here saw done, doing anything of the kind, and fitting up a library in a solitary tower, instead of passing his time in clubs and réunions, and other pursuits and pleasures of general society. But he thought it necessary to say something to the point, and rejoined:
  "Porson was a great man, and his dictum would have weighed with me if I had had a velleity towards German; but I never had any. But I rather wonder you should have placed your library on the upper instead of the middle floor. The prospect, as you have observed, is fine from all the floors; but here you have the sea and the sky to the greatest advantage; and: I would assign my best look-out to the hours of dressing and undressing; the first thing in the morning, the last at night, and the half-hour before dinner. You can give greater attention to the views before you, when you are following operations, important certainly, but mechanical from repetition, and uninteresting in themselves, than when you are engaged in some absorbing study, which probably shuts out all perception of the external world."
  "What you say is very true, sir," said the other; " but you know the lines of Milton---

           Or let my lamp, at midnight hour,
           Be seen in some high lonely tower,
           Where I may oft outwatch the Bear,
           With thrice great Hermes.*

  "These lines have haunted me from very early days, and principally influenced me in purchasing this tower, and placing my library on the top of it. And I have another association with such a mode of life."
  A French clock in the library struck two, and the young gentleman proposed to his visitor to walk into the house. They accordingly descended the stairs, and crossed the entrance-hall to a large drawing-room, simply but handsomely furnished; having some good pictures on the walls, an organ at one end of the room, a piano and harp at the other, and an elegantly disposed luncheon in the middle.
  "At this time of the year," said the young gentleman, "I lunch at two, and dine at eight. This gives me two long divisions of the morning, for any in-door and out-door purposes. I hope you will partake with me. You will not find a precedent in Homer for declining the invitation."
  "Really," said the Doctor, "that argument is cogent and conclusive. I accept with pleasure: and indeed my long walk has given me an appetite."
  "Now you must know," said the young gentleman, "I have none but female domestics. You will see my two waitingmaids."
  He rang the bell, and the specified attendants appeared: two young girls about sixteen and seventeen; both pretty, and simply, but very becomingly, dressed.
  Of the provision set before him the Doctor preferred some cold chicken and tongue. Madeira and sherry were on the table, and the young attendants offered him hock and claret. The Doctor took a capacious glass from each of the fair cup-bearers, and pronounced both wines excellent, and deliciously cool. He declined more, not to over-heat himself in walking, and not to infringe on his anticipations of dinner. The dog, who had behaved throughout with exemplary propriety, was not forgotten. The Doctor rose to depart.
  "I think," said his host, "I may now ask you the Homeric question--Tis? pothen eis andrón?"*
  "Most justly," said the Doctor. "My name is Theophilus Opimian. I am a Doctor of Divinity, and the incumbent of Ashbrook-cum-Ferndale."
  "I am simply," said the other, "Algernon Falconer. I have inherited some money, but no land. Therefore having the opportunity, I made this purchase, to fit it up in my own fashion, and live in it in my own way."
  The Doctor preparing to depart, Mr. Falconer proposed to accompany him part of the way, and calling out another Newfoundland dog, who immediately struck up a friendship with his companion, he walked away with the Doctor, the two dogs gambolling before them.

          Mille hominum species, et rerum discolor usus;
          Velle suum cuique est, nec voto vivitur uno.
            --Persius. [Sat., V. 62 f.]

          In mind and taste men differ as in frame:
          Each has his special will, and few the same.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
It strikes me as singular that, with such a house, you should have only female domestics.

        MR. FALCONER.
It is not less singular perhaps that they are seven sisters, all the children of two servants of my father and mother. The eldest is about my own age, twenty-six, so that they have all grown up with me in time and place. They live in great harmony together, and divide among them the charge of all the household duties. Those whom you saw are the two youngest.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
If the others aquit themselves as well, you have a very efficient staff; but seven young women as the establishment of one young bachelor, for such I presume you to be. (Mr. Falconer assented), is something new and strange. The world is not overcharitable.

        MR. FALCONER.
The world will never suppose a good motive where it can suppose a bad one. I would not willingly offend any of its prejudices. I would not affect eccentricity. At the same time, I do not feel disposed to be put out of my way because it is not the way of the world---Le Chemin du Monde, as the Frenchman entitled Congreve's comedy*---but I assure you these seven young women live here as they might in the temple of Vesta. It was a singular combination of circumstances that induced and enabled me to form such an establishment; but I would not give it up, nor alter it, nor diminish it, for any earthly consideration.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
You hinted that, beside Milton's verses, you had another association of ideas with living in the top of a tower.

        MR. FALCONER.
I have read of somebody who lived so, and he admitted to his sanctum only one young person, a niece or a daughter, I forget which, but on very rare occasions would descend to speak to some visitor who had previously propitiated the young lady to obtain him an interview. At last the young lady introduced one who proposed for her, and gained the consent of the recluse (I am not sure of his name, but I always call him Lord Noirmont) to carry her off. I think this was associated with some affliction that was cured or some mystery that was solved, and that the hermit returned into the every-day world. I do not know where I read it, but I have always liked the idea of living like Lord Noirmont, when I shall have become a sufficiently disappointed man.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
You look as little like a disappointed man as any I have seen; but as you have neither daughter nor niece, you would have seven links instead of one between the top of your tower and the external world.

        MR. FALCONER.
We are all born to disappointment. It is as well to be prospective. Our happiness is not what it is, but in what is to be. We may be disappointed in our everyday realities, and if not, we may make an ideality of the unattainable, and quarrel with Nature for not giving what she has not to give. It is unreasonable to be so disappointed, but it is disappointment not the less.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
It is something like the disappointment of the men of Gotham when they could not fish up the moon from the sea.

        MR. FALCONER.
It is very like it, and there are more of us in the predicament of the men of Gotham than are ready to acknowledge the similitude.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
I am afraid I am too matter-of-fact to sympathize very clearly with this form of æstheticism; but here is a charming bit of forest scenery. Look at that old oak with the deer under it; the long and deep range of fern running up from it to that beech-grove on the upland. the lights and shadows in its foreground. It is a place in which a poet might look for a glimpse of a Hamadryad.

        MR. FALCONER.
Very beautiful for the actual present--too beautiful for the probable future. Some day or other the forest will be disforested; the deer will be either banished or destroyed; the wood will be either shut up or cut down. Here is another basis for disappointment. The more we admire it now, the more we shall regret it then. The admiration of sylvan and pastoral scenery is at the mercy of an inclusure act, and instead of the glimpse of a Hamadryad you will sometime see a large board warning you off the premises under penalty of rigour of law.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
But, my dear young friend, you have yourself enclosed a favourite old resort omine and of many others. I did not see such a board as you speak of; but there is an effective fence which answers the purpose.

        MR. FALCONER.
True; but when. the lot of crown land was put up for sale, it was sure to be purchased and shut up by somebody. At any rate, I have not interfered with the external picturesque; and I have been much more influenced by an intense desire of shutting up melf than of shutting up the place, merely because it is my property.

  About half way from their respective homes the two new friends separated, the Doctor having promised to walk over again soon to dine and pass the night.
  The Doctor soliloquized as he walked.
  Strange metamorphosis of the old tower. A good dining room. A good library. A bed-room between them; he did not show it me. Good wine: excellent. Pretty waiting-maids: exceedingly pretty. Two of seven vestals, who maintain the domestic fire on the hearth of this young Numa.* By the way, they had something of the Vestal costume: white dresses with purple borders. But they had nothing on their heads but their own hair, very gracefully arranged. The Vestals had head-dresses, which hid their hair, if they had any. They were shaved on admission . Perhaps the hair was allowed to grow again. Perhaps not. I must look into the point. If not, it was a wise precaution. "Hair, the only grace of form,"* says the Arbiter Elegantarium, who compares a bald head to a fungus.* A head without hair, says Ovid, is as a field without grass, and a shrub without leaves.* Venus herself, if she had appeared with a bald head, would not have tempted Apuleius:* and I am of his mind. A husband, in Menander,* in a fit of jealous madness, shaves his wife's head; and when he sees what he has made of her, rolls at her feet in an agony of remorse. He was at any rate safe from jealousy till it grew again. And here is a subtlety of Euripides, which none of his commentators have seen into. Ægisthus has married Electra to a young farmer, who cultivates his own land. He respects the Princess from magnanimity, and restores her a pure virgin to her brother Orestes. "Not probable," say some critics. But I say, highly probable: for she comes on with her head shaved. There is the talisman, and the consummate artifice of the great poet. It is ostensibly a symbol of grief; but not the less a most efficient ally of the aforesaid maganimity. "In mourning," says Aristotle, sympathizing with the dead, we deform ourselves by cutting of our hair."* And truly, it is sympathy in approximation. A woman's head shaved is a step towards a death's head. As a symbol of grief, it was not necessary to the case of Electra; for in the sister tragedies of Æschylus and Sophocles, her grief is equally great, and she appears with flowing hair; but in them she is an unmarried maid, and there is no dramatic necessity for so conspicuous an antidote to her other charms. Neither is it according to custom; for in recent grief the whole hair was sacrificed, but in the memory of an old sorrow only one or two curls were cut off.* Therefore it was the dramatic necessity of a counter-charm that influenced Euripides. Helen knew better than to shave her head in a case where custom required it. Euripides makes Electra reproach Helen for thus preserving her beauty;* which further illustrates his purpose in shaving the head of Electra where custom did not require it. And Terence showed his taste in not shaving the head of his heroine in the Phormio, though the severity of Athenian custom would have required it. Her beauty shone through her dishevelled hair, but with no hair at all she would not have touched the heart of Antipho. Alla tié moi tauta philos dielexato thumos?* But wherefore does my mind discourse these things to me? suspending dismal images on lovely realities? for the luxuriant hair of these young girls is of no ordinary beauty. Their tresses have not been deposited under the shadow of the sacred lotus, as Pliny tells us those of the Vestals were.* Well, this young gentleman's establishment may be perfectly moral, strictly correct, but in one sense it is morality thrown away: the world will give him no credit for it. I am sure Mrs. Opimian will not. If he were married it would be different. But I think, if he were to marry now, there would be a fiercer fire than Vesta's among his Lares. The temple would be too hot for the seven virgins. I suppose, as he is so resolute against change, he does not mean to marry. Then he tals about anticipated disappointment in some unrealizable ideality, leading him to behave like Lord Noirmont, whom I never heard of before. He is far enough off from that while he lunches and walks as he does, and no doubt dines in accordance. He will not break his heart for any moon in the water, if his cooks are as good as his waiting-maids, and the wine which he gave me is a fair specimen of his cellar. He is learned too. Greek seems to be the strongest chord in his sympathies. If it had not been for the singular accident of his overhearing me repeat half a dozen lines of Homer, I should not have been asked to walk in. I might have leaned over the gate till sunset, and have had no more notice taken of me than if I had been a crow.
  At dinner the Doctor narrated his morning adventure to Mrs. Opimian, and found her, as he had anticipated, most virtuously uncharitable with respect to the seven sisters. She did not depart from her usual serenity, but said, with equal calmness and decision, that she had no belief in the virtue of young men.
  "My dear," said the Doctor, "it has been observed, though I forget by whom, that there is in every man's life a page which is usually doubled down. Perhapsthere is such a page in the life of our young friend; but if there be, the volume which contains it is not in the same house of the seven sisters."
  The Doctor could not retire to rest without verifying his question touching the hair of the Vestals; and stepping into his study was taking out an old folio to consult Lipsius de Vestalibus, when a passage flashed across his memory, which seemed decisive on the point. "How could I overlook it?" he thought.

          "Ignibus Iliacis aderam: cum lapsa capillis
            Decidit ante sacros lanea vitta focos:*

says Rhea Sylvia in the Fasti."
  He took down the Fasti, and turning over the leaves lighted on another line:--

          Attonitæ flebant demisso crine ministræ.*

With the note of an old commentator: "This will enlighten those who doubt if the Vestals wore their hair." "I infer," said the Doctor, "that I have doubted in good company; but it is clear that the Vestals did wear their hair of second growth. But if it was wrapped in wool, it might as well not have been there. The vitta was at once the symbol and the talisman of chastity. Shall I recommend my young friend to wrap up the heads of his Vestals in a vitta? It would be safer for all parties. But I cannot imagine a piece of advice for which the giver would receive less thanks. And I had rather see them as they are. So I shall let well alone."

      Euphraine sauton: pine ton kath' hémeran
      Bion logizou son, ta d' alla tés Tuchés.
            --Euripides: Alcestis. [788 f.]

      Rejoice thy spirit: drink: the passing day.
      Esteem thine own, and all beyond as Fortune's.

THE DOCTOR was not long without remembering his promise to revisit his new acquaintance, and purposing to remain till next morning, he set out later in the day. The weather was intensely hot; he walked slowly, and paudes more frequently than usual, to rest under the shade of trees. He was shown into the drawing-room, where he was shortly joined by Mr. Falconer, and very cordially welcomed.
  The two friends dined together in the lower room of the Tower. The dinner and wine were greatly to the Doctor's mind. In due time they adjourned to the drawing-room, and the two young handmaids who had waited at dinner attended with coffee and tea. The Doctor then said--"You are well provided with musical instruments. Do you play?"

        MR. FALCONER.
No. I have profited by the observation of Doctor Johnson: "Sir, once on a time I took to fiddling; but found I that to fiddle well I must fiddle all my life, and thought I could do something better."*

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Then, I presume, these are pieces of ornamental furniture, for the use of occasional visitors?

        MR. FALCONER.
Not exactly. My maids play on them, and sing to them.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Your maids!

        MR. FALCONER.
Even so. They have been thoroughly well educated, and are all accomplished musicians.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
And at what time do they usually play on them?

        MR. FALCONER.
Every evening about this time, when I am alone.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
And why not when you have company?

        MR. FALCONER.
La Morgue Aristocratique,* which pervades all society, would not tolerate such a proceeding on the part of young women, of whom some had superintended the preparation of the dinner, and others attended on it. It would not have been incongruous in the Homeric age.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Then I'll hope you will allow it to be not incongruous this evening, Homer being the original vinculum* between you and me.

        MR. FALCONER.
Would you like to hear them?

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Indeed I should

  The two younger sisters having answered the summons, and the Doctor's wish having been communicated, the seven appeared together, all in the same dress of white and purple.
  "The Seven Pleiads!" thought the Doctor. "What a constellation of beauty!" He stood up and bowed to them, which they gracefully acknowledged.
  They then played on, and sang to, the harp and piano. The Doctor was enchanted.
  After a while, they passed over to the organ, and performed some sacred music of Mozart and Beethoven. They then paused and looked round, as if for instructions.
  "We usually end," said Mr. Falconer, "with a hym to St. Catharine, but perhaps it may not be to your taste; although Saint Catharine is a saint of the English Church Calendar."
  "I like all sacred music," said the Doctor. "And I am not disposed to object to a saint of the English Church Calendar."
  "She is also," said Mr. Falconer, "a most perfect emblem of purity, and in that sense alone there can be no fitter image to be presented to the minds of young women."
  "Very true," said the Doctor. "And very strange withal," he thought to himself."
  The sisters sang their hym, made their obeisance, and departed.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
The hands of those young women do not show signs of menial work.

        MR. FALCONER.
They are the regulating spirits of the household. They have a staff of their own for the courser and harder work.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Their household duties, then, are such as Homeric damsels discharged in the homes of their fathers, with dmóai for the lower drudgery

        MR. FALCONER.
Something like it.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Young ladies, in short, in manners and accomplishments, though not in social position; only more useful in a house than young ladies generally are.

        MR. FALCONER.
Something like that, too. If you know the tree by its fruit, the manner in which this house is kept may reconcile you to the singularity of the experiment.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
I am perfectly reconciled to it. The experiment is eminently successful.

  The Doctor always finished his day with a tumbler of brandy and water: soda water in summer, and hot water in winter. After his usual draught he retired to his chamber, where he slept like a top, and dreamed of Electra and Nausicaa, Vestals, Pleiads, and Saint Catharine, and woke with the last words he had heard sung on the preceding night still ringing in his ears:--

            Dei virgo Catharina,
            Lege constans in divina,
            Coeli gemma preciosa,
            Margarita fulgda,
            Sponsa Christi gloriosa,
            Paradisi viola!*

          Despairing beside a clear stream.
          A shepherd forsaken was laid. *

THE NEXT morning, after a comfortable breakfast, the Doctor set out on his walk home. ung friend accompanied him part of the way, and did not part with him until he had obtained a promise of another and longer visit.
  The Doctor, as usual, soliloquized as he walked. "No doubt these are Vestals. The purity of the establishment is past question. This young gentleman has every requisite which her dearest friends would desire in a husband for Miss Gryll. And she is in every way suited to him. But these seven damsels interpose themselves, like the sevenfold shield of Ajax. There is something very attractive in these damsels:

                  facies non omnibus una,
            Nec diversa tamen: qualem decet esse sororum.*

If I had such an establishment, I should be loath to break it up. It is original, in thes days of monotony. It is satisfactory, in these days of uncongenial relations between master and servant. It is effective, in the admirable arrangements of the household. It is graceful, in the personal beauty and tasteful apparel of the maidens. It agreeable, in their manners, in their accomplishments, in their musical skill. It is like an enchanted palace. Mr. Gryll who talks so much of Circe, would find himself at home; he might fancy himself waited on by her handmaids, the daughters of fountains, groves, and rivers. Miss Gryll might fancy herself in the dwelling of her namesake, Morgana. But I fear she would be for dealing with it as Orlando did with Morgana, breaking the talisman and dissolving the enchantment. This would be a pity; but it would be a pity that these two young persons should not come together. But why should I trouble myself with match-making? It is always a thankless office. If it turns out well, your good service is forgotten. If it turns out well, you are abused by both parties."
  The Doctor's soliloquy was cut short by the sound of lamentation, which, as he went on, came to him in louder and louder bursts. He was attracted to the spot whence the sounds proceeded, and had some difficulty in discovering a doleful swain, who was ensconced in a mass of fern, talleran himself if he had been upright; and but that, by rolling over and over in the turbulence of his grief, he had flattened a large space down to the edge of the forest brook near which he reclined, he would have remained invisible in his lair. The tears in his eyes, and the passionate utterances of his voice, contrasted strangely with a round russetin face, which seemed fortified by beef and ale against all possible furrows of care; but against love, even beef and ale, mighty talismans as they are, are feeble barriers. Cupid's arrows had pierced through the æs triplex* of treble X, and the stricken deer lay mourning by the stream.
  The Doctor approached, kindly inquired, "What is the matter?" but was answered only by a redoubled burst of sorrow and an emphatic rejection of all sympathy.
  "You can't do me any good."
  "You do not know that," said the Doctor. "No man knows what good another can do him till he communicates his trouble."
  For some time the Doctor could obtain no other answer than the repetition of "You can't do me any good." But at length the patience and kind face of the inquirer had their effect on the sad shepherd, and he brought out with desperate effort and a more clamorous explosion of grief,
  "She won't have me!"
  "Who won't have you?" said the Doctor.
  "Well, if you must know," said the swain, "you must. It's one of the young ladies up at the Folly."
  "Young ladies?" said the Doctor.
  "Servants they call themselves," said the other; "but they are more like ladies, and hold their heads high enough when one of them won't have me. Father's is one of the best farms for miles round, and it's all his own. He's a true old yeoman, father is. And there's nobody but him and me. And if I had a nice wife, that would be a good housekeeper for him, and play and sing to him of an evening--for she can do anything, she can--read, and write, and keep accounts, and play and sing--I've heard her--and make a plum pudding--I've seen her--we should be as happy as three crickets--four, perhaps, at the year's end: and she won't have me.
  "You have put the question?" said the Doctor.
  "Plump," said the other. "And she looked at first as if she was going to laugh. She didn't, though. Then she looked serious, and said she was very sorry for me. She said she saw I was in earnest. She knew I was a good son, and deserved a good wife; but she couldn't have me. Miss, said I, do you like anybody better? No, she said, very heartily.
  "That is one comfort," said the Doctor.
  "What comfort," said the other, "when she won't have me?"
  "She may alter her mind," said the Doctor, "if she does not prefer any one else. Besides, she may only say she can't."
  "Can't," said the other, "is civil for won't. That's all."
  "Does she say why she can't?" said the Doctor.
  "Yes," said the other. "She says she and her sisters won't part with each other and their young master."
  "Now," said the Doctor, "you have not told me whichof the seven sisters is the one in question."
  "It's the third," said the other. "What they call the second cook. There's a housekeeper and two cooks, and two housemaids and two waiting-maids. But they only manage for the young master. There are others that wait on them."
  "And what is her name?" said the Doctor.
  "Dorothy," said the other; her name is Dorothy. Their names follow like A B C, only that A comes last. Betsey, Catharine, Dorothy, Eleanor, Fanny, Grace, Anna. But they told me it was not the alphabet they were christened from; it was the key of A minor, if you know what that means."
  "I think I do," said the Doctor, laughing. "They were christened from the Greek diatonic scale, and make up two conjunct tetrachords, if you know what that means."
  "I can't say I do," said the other, looking bewildered.
  "And so," said the Doctor, "the young gentleman, whose name is Algernon, is the Proslambanomenos, or key-note, and makes up the octave. His parents must have designed it as a foretelling, that he and his seven foster-sisters were to live in harmony all their lives. But how did you become acquainted?"
  "Why," said the other, "I take a great many things to the house from our farm, and it's generally she that takes them in."
  "I know the house well," said the Doctor, "and the master, and the maids. Perhaps he will marry, and they may follow the example. Live in hope. Tell me your name."
  "Hedgerow," said the other, "Harry Hedgerow. And if you know her, ain't she a beauty?"
  "Why, yes," said the Doctor, "they are all good looking."
  "And she won't have me," cried the other, but with a more subdued expression. The Doctor had consoled him, and given him a ray of hope. And they went their several ways.
  The Doctor resumed his soliloquy.
  "Here is the semblance of something

towards a solution of the difficulty. If one of the damsels should marry, it would break the combination. One will not by herself. But what if seven apple-faced Hedgerows should rpopose simultaneously, seven notes in the key of A minor, an octave below? Stranger things have happened. I have read of six brothers who had the civility to break their necks in succession, that the seventh, who was the hero of the story, might inherit an estate. But, again and again, why should I trouble myself with match-making? I had better leave things to take their own course."
  Still in his interior speculum,* the Doctor could not help seeing a dim reflection of himself pronouncing the nuptial benediction on his two young friends.

            Indulge Genio: carpamus dulcia: nostrum est
          Quod vivus: cinis, et manes, et fabula fies.
          Vive memor lethi: fuhit hora: quod hoc loquor, inde est.
            --Persius. [Sat., 151 ff.]

          Indulge thy genius, while the hour's thine own:
          Even while we speak, some part of it has flown.
          Snatch the swift-passing good: 'twill end ere long
          In dust, and shadow, and an old wife's song.

AGAPÊTUS and Agapêtæ,"* said the Reverend Doctor Opimian, the next morning at breakfast, in the best sense of the words: that, I am satisfied, is the relation between this young gentleman and his handmaids."

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
Perhaps, Doctor, you will have the goodness to make your view of this relation a little more intelligble to me.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Assuredly, my dear. The word signifies "beloved," in its purest sense. And in this sense was used by Saint Paul in reference to some of his female co-religionists and fellow-labourers in the vineyard, in whose houses he occasionally dwelt. And in this sense it was applied to virgins and holy men, who dwelt under the same roof in spiritual love.

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
Very likely, indeed. You are a holy man, Doctor, but I think, if you were a bachelor, and I were a maid, I should not trust myself to be your aga-- aga---

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Agapêtê. But I never pretended to this sort of spiritualism. I followed the advice of Saint Paul, who says it is better to marry---*.

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
You need not finish the quotation.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Agapêtê is often translated "adoptive sister." A very possible relation, I think, where there are vows of celibacy, and inward spiritual grace.

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
Very possible, indeed: and equally possible where there are none.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
But more possible where there are seven adoptive sisters, than where there is only one.

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
Perhaps.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
The manners, my dear, of these damsels towards their young master, are infallible indications of the relations between them. Their respectful deference to him is a symptom in which I cannot be mistaken.

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
I hope you are not.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
I am sure I am not. I would stake all my credit for observation and experience on the purity of the seven Vestals. I am not strictly accurate in calling them so: for in Rome the number of Vestals was only six. But there were seven Pleiads, till one disappeared. We may fancy she became a seventh Vestal in the name of modern progress.

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
There used to be seven deadly sins. How many has modern progress added to them?

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
None, I hope, my dear. But this will be due, not to its own tendencies, but to the comprehensiveness of the old definitions.

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
I think I have heard something like your old Greek word before.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Agapêmonê, my dear. You may have heard the word Agapêmonê.

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
That is it. And what may it signify?

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
It signifies Abode of Love: spiritual love, of course

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
Spiritual love, which rides in carriages and four, fares sumptuously, like Dives, and protects itself with a high wall from profane observation.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Well, my dear, and there may be no harm in all that.

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
Doctor, you are determined not to see harm in anything.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
I am afraid I see more harm in many things that I like to see. But one reason for not seeing harm in this Agapêmonê matter is, that I hear so little about it. The world is ready enough to promulgate scandal; but that which is quietly right may rest in peace.

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
Surely, Doctor, you do not think this Agapêmonê right?

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
I only say I do not know whether it is right or wrong. It is nothing new. Three centuries ago there was a Family of Love, on which Middleton wrote a comedy. Queen Elizabeth persecuted this family; Middleton made it ridiculous; but it oulived them both, and there may have been no harm in it at all.

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
Perhaps, Doctor, the world is too good to see any novelty except in something wrong.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Perhaps it is only wrong that arrests attention, because right is common, and wrong is rare. Of the many thousand persons who walk daily through a street you only hear of one who has been robbed or knocked down. If ever Hamlet's news--"that the world has grown honest"*--should prove true, there would be an end of our newspaper. For, let us see, what is the epitome of a newspaper? In the first place, specimens of all the deadly sins, and infinite varieties of violence and fraud; a great quantity of talk, called by courtesy legislative wisdom, of which the result is "an incoherent and undigested mass of law, shot down, as from a rubbish-cart, on the heads of the people;"* lawyers barking at each other in that peculiar style of hylactic* delivery which is called forensic eloquence, and of which the first and most distinguished was Cerberus;* bear-garden meetings of mismanaged companies, in which directors and shareholdrs abuse each other in choice terms, not all to be found in Rabelais; burstings of bank bubbles, which, like a touch of harlequin's wand, strip off their masks and dominoes from "highly respectable" gentlemen, and leave them in their true figures of cheats and pickpockets; societies of all sorts, for teaching everybody everything, meddling with everybody's business, and mending everybody's morals; mountebank advertisements promising the beauty of Helen in a bottle of cosmetic, and the age of Old Parr* in a box of pills; folly all alive in things called reunions; announcements that some exceedingly stupid fellow has been "entertaining" a select company; matters, however multiform, multifarious, and multitudinous, all brought into family likeness by the varnish of false pretension with which they are overlaid.

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
I did not like to interrupt you, Doctor; but it struck me, while you were speaking, that in reading the newspaper you do not hear the bark of the lawyers.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
True; but no one who has once heard the wow-wow can fail to reproduce it in imagination.

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
You have omitted accidents, which occupy a large space in the newspaper. If the world grew ever so honest, there would still be accidents.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
But honesty would materially diminish the number. High pressure steamers would not scatter death and destruction around them, if the dishonesty of avarice did not tempt their employment, where the more costly low pressure would ensure absolute safety. Honestly built houses would not come suddenly down and crush their occupants. Ships, faithfully built and effciently manned, would not so readily strike on a lee shore, nor go instantly to pieces on the first touch of the ground. Honestly made sweetmeats would not poison children; honestly compounded drugs would not poison patients. In short, the larger portion of what we call accidents are crimes.

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
I have often heard you say, of railways and steam vessels, that the primary cause of their disasters is the insane passion of the public for speed. That is not crime, but folly.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
It is crime in those who ought to know better than to act in the furtherance of the folly. But when the world has grown honest, it will no doubt grow wise. When we have got rid of crime, we may consider how to get rid of folly. So that question is adjourned to the Greek kalends.

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
There are always in a newspaper some things of a creditable character.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
When we are at war, naval and military heroism abundantly; but in time of peace, these virtues sleep. They are laid up like ships in ordinary. No doubt, of the recorded facts of civil life some are good, and more are indifferent, neither good nor bad; but good and indifferent together are scarcely moree than a twelfth part of the whole. Still, the matters thus presented are all exceptional cases. A hermit reading nothing but a newspaper might find little else than food for misanthropy; but living among friends, and in the bosom of our family, we see that the dark side of life is the occasional picture, the bright is its every-day aspect. The occasional is the matter for curiosity, of incident, of adventure, of things that really happen to few, and may possibly happen to any. The interest attendant on any action or event is in just proportion to its rarity; and, happily, quiet virtues are all around us, and unobtrusive vices seldom cross our path. On the whole, I agree in opinion with Theseus, that there is more good than evil in the world.*

        MRS. OPIMIAN.
I think, Doctor, you would not maintain any opinion if you had not an authority two thousand years old for it.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Well, my dear, I think most opinions worth maintaining have an authority of about that age.

          Psyxon ton oinon, Dóri. ----
          ---- Egcheon su dé piein:
          Euzóroteron ge né Di', ó pai, dos: to gar
          Hudares apan tout' esti téi psychéi kakon.
            --Diphilus. [Op. Meinecke. Com. Fragm. iv. 375.]

          Cool the wine, Doris. Pour it in the cup
          Simple, unmixed with water. Such dilution
          Serves only to wash out the spirit of man.

THE DOCTOR, under the attraction of his new acquaintance, had allowed more time than usual to elapse between his visits to Gryll Grange, and when he resumed them, he was not long without communicating the metamorphosis of the Old Tower, and the singularities of its inhabitants. They had dined well as usual, and drank their wine cool.

        MISS GRYLL.
There are many things in what you have told us that exzcite my curiosity; but first, what do you suppose is the young man's religion?

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
From the great liking he seems to have taken to me, I should think he was of the Church of England, if I did not rather explain it by our Greek sympathy. At the same time, he kept very carefully in view that Saint Catharine is a saint of the English Church Calendar. I imagine there is less of true piety than of abstract notion of ideal beauty, even in his devotion to her. But it is so far satisfactory that he wished to prove his religion, such as it is, to be within the pale of the Church of England.

        MISS GRYLL.
I like the idea of his closing the day with a hymn, sung in concert by his seven Vestals.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
I am glad that you think charitably of the damsels. It is not every lady that would. But I am satisfied they deserve it.

        MR. GRYLL.
I should like to know the young gentleman. I wish you could manage to bring him here. Should you not like to see him, Morgana?

        MISS GRYLL.
Yes, uncle.

        MR. GRYLL.
Try what you can do, Doctor. We shall have before long some petical and philosophical visitors. That may tempt him to join us.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
It may to me to be indisposed to general society, and to care for nothing but woods, rivers, and the sea; Greek poetry, Saint Catharine, and the seven Vestals. However, I will try what can be done.

        MR. GRYLL.
But, Doctor, I think he would scarcely have provided such a spacious dining room, and so much domestic accommodation, if he had intended to shut himself up from society altogether. I expect that some day when you go there you will find a large party. Try if he will co-operate in the Aristophanic comedy.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
A good idea. That may be something to his mind.

        MISS GRYLL.
Talking of comedy, Doctor, what has become of Lord Curryfin, and his lecture on fish?

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Why, Lord Michin Malicho,* Lord Facing-both-ways,* and two or three other arch-quacks, have taken to merryandrewising in a new arena, which they call the Science of Pantopragmatics, and they have bitten Lord Curryfin into tumbling with them; but the mania will subside when the weather grows cool; and no doubt we shall still have him at Thornback Bay, teaching ther fishermen how to know a herring from a halibut.

        MISS GRYLL.
But pray, Doctor, what is this new science?

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Why, that, Miss Gryll, I cannot well make out. I have asked several professors of the science, and have got nothing in return but some fine varieties of rigmarole, of which I can make neither head nor tail. It seems to be areal art of talking about an imaginary art of teaching every man his own business. Nothing practical comes of it, and indeed so much the better. It will be at least harmless, as long as it is like Hamlet's reading, "words, words, words."*. Like most other science, it resolves itself into lecturing, lecturing, lecturing, aboof matters, relevant and irrelevant: one enormous bore prating about jurisprudence, another about statistics, another about education, and so forth; the crambe repetita* of the same rubbish, which has already been served up "twiës hot and twiës cold,"* at many other associations nick-named scientific.

        MISS GRYLL.
Then, Doctor, I should think Lord Curryfin's lecture would be a great relief to the unfortunate audience.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
No doubt more amusing, and equally profitable. Not a fish more would be caught for it, and this will typify the result of all such scientific talk. I had rather hear a practical cook lecture on bubble and squeak: no bad emblem of the whole affair.

        MISS GRYLL.
It has been said a man of genius can discourse on anything. Bubble and squeak seems a limited subject; but in the days of the French revolution there was an amusing poem with that title;* and there might be an amusing lecture; especially if it were like the poem, discursive and emblematical. But men so dismally far gone in the affectation of earnestness would scarcely rlish it.

          ---- gli occhi su levai,
          E vidi lei che si facea corona,
          Riflettendo da sè gli eterni rai.
            --Dante: Paradiso, xxxi. 70-72.

                I lifted up my gaze,
          And looked on her who made herself a crown,
          Reflecting from herself the eternal rays.

IT WAS not long before the Doctor again walked to the Tower, to propose to his young friend to co-operate in the Aristophanic comedy.
  He found him well disposed to do so, and they passed a portion of the afternoon in arranging their programme.
  They dined, and passed the evening much as before. The next morning, as they were ascending to the library to resume their pleasant labour, the Doctor said to himself, "I have passed along galleries wherein were many chambers, and the doors in the day were more commonly open than shut, yet this chamber door of my young friend is always shut. There must be a mystery in it. And the Doctor, not generally given to morbid curiosity, found himself very curious about this very simple matter.
  At last he mustered up courage to say, "I have seen your library, dining-room, and drawing-room; but you have so much taste in internal arrangements, I should like to see the rest of the house.

        MR. FALCONER.
There is not much more to see. You have occupied one of the best bedrooms. The rest do not materially differ.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
To say the truth, I should like to seen your own.

        MR. FALCONER.
I am quite willing. But I have thought, perhaps erroneously, it is decorated in a manner you might not altogether approve.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Nothing indecorous, I hope.

        MR. FALCONER.
Quite the contrary. You may, perhaps, think it too much devoted to my peculiar views of the purity of ideal beauty, as developed in Saint Catharine.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
You have not much to apprehend on that score.

    Si bene calculum ponas, ubique naufragium est.
      --Petronius Arbiter. [Sat. 115, 17.]

    If you consider well the events of life, shipwreck is everywhere.

AFTER luncheon the Doctor thought of returning home, when a rumbling of thunder made him pause. They reascended the tower, to reconnoitre the elements from the library. The windows were so arranged as to afford a panoramic view.
  The thunder muttered far off, but there was neither rain nor visible lightning.
  "The storm is at a great distance," said the Doctor, "and it seems to be passing away on the verge of the sky."
  But on the opposite horizon appeared a mass of dark-blue cloud, which rose rapidly, and advanced in the direct line of the Tower. Befire it rolled a lighter but still lurid volume of vapour, which curled and wreathed like eddying smoke bfore the denser blackness of the unbroken cloud.
  Simultaneously followed the flashing of lightning, the rolling of thunder, and a deluge of rain like the bursting of a waterspout.
  They sate some time in silence, watching the storm as it swept along, with wind, and driving rain, and whirling hail, bringing for a time almost the darkness of night, through which the forked lightning poured a scarcely interrupted blaze.
  Suddenly came a long dazzling flash, that seemed to irradiate the entire circumference of the sky, followed instantaneously by one of those crashing peals of thunder, which always indicate that something very near has been struck by lightning.
  The Doctor turned around to make a remark on the awful grandeur of the effect, when he observed that his young friend had disappeared. On his return, he said he had been looking for what had been struck.
  "And what was?" said the Doctor.
  "Nothing in the house," said his host.
  "The Vestals," thought the Doctor; "these were all his solicitude."
  But though Mr. Falconer had looked no further than to the safety of the seven sisters, his attention was soon drawn to a tumult below, which seemed to indicate that some serious mischief had resulted from the lightning; and the youngest of the sisters, appearing in great trepidation, informed him that one of two horses in a gentleman's carriage had been struck dead, and that a young lady in the carriage had been stunned by the passing flash, though how far she was injured by it could not be immediately known. The other horse, it appeared, had been prancing in terror, and had nearly overthrown the carriage; but he had been restrained by the vigorous arm of a young farmer, who had subsequently carried the young lady into the house, where she was now resting on a couch in the female apartments, and carefully attended by the sisters.
  Mr. Falconer and the Doctor descended into the hall, and were assured that the young lady was doing well, but that she would be much the better for being left some time longer undisturbed. An elderly gentleman issued from the female apartments, and the Doctor with some amazement recognised his friend Mr. Gryll, to whom and his niece this disaster had occurred.
  The beauty of the morning had tempted them to a long drive; and they thought it would be a good opportunity to gratify at least a portion of the curiosity which the Doctors description of the Folly and its inhabitants had excited in them. They had therefore determined on taking a circuit, in which they would pass under the walls of the Tower. They were almost at the extremity of their longest radius when the storm burst over them, and were just under the Tower when the lightning struck one of their horses. Harry Hedgerow was on his way with some farm produce when the accident occurred, and was the young farmer who had subdued the surviving horse and carried the young lady into the house. Mr. Gryll was very panegyrical of this young man's behaviour, and the Doctor when he recognised him shook him heartily by the hand, and told him he felt sure that he was a lad who would make his way: a remark which Harry received as a good omen: for Dorothy heard it, and looked at him with a concurrent, though silent, approbation.
  The drawing-room and the chambers for visitors were between the tower and the gynæceum, or female apartments, which were as completely separated from the rest of the house as they could have been in Athens.
  After some anxious inquiries, it was reported that the young lady was sleeping, and that one or other of the sisters would keep constant watch by her. It was therefore arranged that Mr. Gryll should dine and pass the night where he was. Before dinner he had the satisfaction of hearing from medical authority that all would be well after a little time.
  Harry Hedgerow had bethought him of a retired physician, who lived with a maiden sister in a cottage at no great distance from the Tower, and who gave gratuitous advice to his poorer neighbours. if he prescribed anything beyond their means, himself or his sister was always ready to supply it. Though their own means were limited, they were the good angels of a small circumference.
  The old physician confirmed the opinion already given by the sisters , that the young lady for the present only required repose: but he accepted the invitation to remain till the morning, in the event of his advice being needed.
  So Miss Gryll remained with the elder sisters. Mr. Gryll and the two Doctors, spiritual and temporal, sat down to dinner with Mr. Falconer, and were waited on, as usual, by the younger handmaids.

    Oinou mé pareontos, aterpea deipna trapezés:
    Oinou mé pareontos, athelgees eisi choreiai.
    Anér penthos echón, hote geusetai héeos oinou,
    Stugnon aexomenés aposeisetai ogkon aniés.

    Where wine is not, no mirth the banquet knows:
    Where wine is not, the damce all joyless grows.
    The man, oppressed with cares, who tastes the bowl,
    Shall shake the weight of sorrow from his bowl.
      --BACCHUS, on the birth of the vine, predicting its benefits: in the
      twelfth book of the Dionysiaca of NONNUS. [XII, 260-61, 268-69]

THE CONVERSATION at dinner turned on the occurences of the morning and the phenomena of electricity. The physician, who had been a traveller, related many anecdotes from his own observation; especially such as tended to show by similarity that the injury to Miss Gryll would not be of long duration. He had known, in similar cases, instances of apparent total paralysis; but he had always found it temporary. Perhaps in a day or two, but at the most in a very few days, it would certainly pass away. In the meantime, he recommended absolute repose. Mr. Falconer entreated Mr. Gryll to consider the home as his own. Matters were arranged accordingly; and it was determined that the next morning a messenger should be despatched to Gryll Grange for a supply of apparel. The Reverend Dr. Opimian, who was as fond as the Squire himself of the young lady, had been grievously discomposed by the accident of the morning, and felt that he should not thoroughly recover his serenity till he could again see her in her proper character, the light and life of her society. He quoted Homer, Æschylus, Aristotle, Plutarch, Athenæus, Horace, Persius, and Pliny, to show that all which is practically worth knowing on the subject of electricity had been known to the ancients. The electric telegraph he held to be a nuisance, as disarranging chronology, and giving only the heads of a chapter, of which the details lost their interest before they arrived, the heads of another chapter having intervened to destroy it. Then, what an amount of misery it inflicted, when, merely saying that there had been a great battle, and that thousands had been wounded or killed, it maintained an agony of suspense in all who had friends on the field, till the ordinary channels of intelligence brought the names of the sufferers. No Sicilian tyrant had invented such an engine of cruelty. This declamation against a supposed triumph of modern science, which was listened to with some surprise by the physician, and with great respect by his other auditors, having somewhat soothed his troubled spirit, in conjunction with the physician's assurance, he propitiated his Genius by copious libations of claret pronouncing high panegyrics on the specimen before him, and interspersing quotations in praise of wine, as the one great panacea for the cares of this world.
  A week passed away. . . Mr. Falconer said, he got on best with that in the Doctor's company. "But I have been writing," he said, "on something connected with the Athenian drama. I have been writing a ballad on the death of Philemon, as told by Suidas and Apuleius." The Doctor expressed a wish to hear it, and Mr. Falconer read it to him.

          THE DEATH OF PHILEMON*

                    I
     Closed was Philemon's hundredth year:
     The theatre was thronged to hear
          His last completed play:
     In the mid scene, a sudden rain
     Dispersed the crowd---to meet again
          On the succeeding day.

     He sought his home, and slept, and dreamed,
     Nine maidens through his door, it seemed,
          Passed to the public street.
     He asked them, "Why they left his home?"
     They said, "A guest will hither come,
          We must not stay to meet."

     He called his boy with morning light,
     Told him the vision of the night,
          And bade his play be brought.
     His finished page again he scanned,
     Resting his head upon his hand,
          Absorbed in studious thought.

     He knew not what the dream foreshowed:
     That nought divine may hold abode
          Where death's dark shade is felt:
     And therefore were the Muses nine
     Leaving the old poetic shrine,
          Where they so long had dwelt.

                    II
     The theatre was thronged once more,
     More thickly than the day before,
          To hear the half-heard song.
     The day wore on. Impatience came,
          With murmure loud and long.

     Some sought at length his studious cell,
     And to the stage returned, to tell
          What thousands strove to ask.
     "The poet we have been to seek
     Sate with his hand upon his chhek,
          As pondering o'er his task.

     "We spoke. He made us no reply.
     We reverentially drew nigh,
          And twice our errand told.
     He answered not. We drew more near:
     The awful mystery then was clear:
          We found him stiff and cold.

     "Struck by so fair a death, we stood
     Awhile in sad admiring mood;
          Then hastened back, to say
     That he, the praised and loved of all,
     Is deaf for ever to your call:
          That on this self-same day,

     "When here presented should have been
     The close of his fictitious scene,
          His life's true scene was o'er:
     We seemed, in solemn silence awed,
     To hear the 'Farewell and applaud,'
          Which he may speak no more.

     "Of tears the rain gave prophecy:
     The nuptial dance of comedy
          Yields to the funeral train.
     Assemble where his pyre must burn:
     Honour his ashes in their urn:
     And on another day return
          To hear his songs again."

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
A beautiful fiction.

        MR. FALCONER.
If it be a fiction. The supernatural is confined to the dream. All the rest is probable; and I am willing to think it true, dream and all.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
You are determined to connect the immaterial with the material world, as far as you can.

        MR. FALCONER.
I like the immaterial world. I like to live among thoughts and images of the past and the possible, and even of the impossible, now and then.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
Certainly, there is much in the material world to displease sensitive and imaginative minds; but I do not know any one who has less cause to complain of it than you have. You are surrounded with all possible comforts, and with all the elements of beauty, and of intellectual enjoyment.

        MR. FALCONER.
It is not my own world that I complain of. It is the world on which I look "from the loop-holes of retreat."* I cannot sit here , like one of the Gods of Epicurus, who, as Cicero says, was satisfied with thinking, through all eternity, "how comfortable he was."* I look with feelings of intense pain on the mass of poverty and crime: of unhealthy and unavailing, unremunerated toil, blighting childhood in its blossom, and womanhood in its prime; of "all the oppressions that are don under the sun."*

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
I feel with you on all these points; but there is much good in the world; more good than evil, I have always maintained.

  They would have gone off in a discussion on this point, but the French clock warned them to luncheon.
  In the evening the young lady was sufficiently recovered to join the little party in the drawing-room, which consisted, as before, of Mr. Falconer, Mr. Gryll, Doctor Anodyne, and the Reverend Doctor Opimian. Miss Gryll was introduced to Mr. Falconer. She was full of grateful encomium for the kind attention of the sisters, and expressed an earnest desire to hear their music. The wish was readily complied with. She heard them with great pleasure, and, though not equal to much exertion, she could not refrain from joining in with them in their hymn to Saint Catharine.
  She accompanied them when they retired.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
I presume those Latin words are genuine old monastic verses: they have all the air of it.

        MR. FALCONER.
They are so, and they are adapted to old music.

        DOCTOR ANODYNE.
There is something in this hymn very solemn and impressive. In an age like ours, in which music and pictures are the predominant tastes, I do not wonder that the forms of the old Catholic worship are received with increasing favour. There is a sort of adhesion to the old religion, which results less from faith than from a certain feeling of poetry; it finds its disciples; but is of modern growth; and has very essential differences from what it outwardly resembles.

        THE REVEREND DOCTOR OPIMIAN.
It is, as I have frequently had occasion to remark, and as my young friend here will readily admit, one of the many forms of the love of ideal beauty, which, without being in itself religion, exerts on vivid imaginations an influence that is very often like it.

        MR. FALCONER.
An orthodox English Churchman was the poet who sang to the Virgin:

     Thy Image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
     Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
     As to a visible Power, in which did blend
     All that was mixed and reconciled in Thee
   &