ut I won't mention
it just now, for half the value of these things consists in the
surprise. I will give you a page or two of it, only begging you to
remark how entirely a man's style alters when he gets into a serious
work. Here I go gabbling on and on to you, without much regard to style,
or perhaps to grammar--(if there are any slips in it, have the kindness
to correct them before you show this to any one)--but the instant I take
up my pen to write a portion of my novel, I get dignified and heroic,
perhaps you will say a little stiff, but I assure you I have formed
myself on the best models. The passage I alluded to was this:--

"To all the graces of external beauty Maria Valentine de Courcy united
all the captivations of the intellect--all the attractions of the
understanding,--all the enchantments of the soul. Cast in the finest
mould of earthly loveliness--radiant in all the charms of youth, of
innocence, and of integrity--she was the loved of all approachers--the
idol of all observers--the appropriator of all affections. A little more
ethereal, she would have been a goddess--a little less celestial, she
would have been a more ordinary woman than she was. For her nature was
of too lofty a kind--her spirit of too sublimated a character--her
disposition of too beatified a placidity, to allow her to be classed
with the other individuals constituting the female sex. A period of many
years had elapsed since she first took up her residence among the proud
halls--the baronial corridors--the heraldic passages of Fitzhedingham
Castle. Winter had found her wandering in the snowy lanes--Spring had
noticed her careering in the budding meadows--Summer had beheld her
perambulating through the flowery grove--and Autumn had kept his eye on
her as she galloped her managed palfrey through the umbrageous orchard,
or skimmed in her light bark over the pellucid bosom of the silver lake.
For many years such had been her unvarying course; and if loveliness has
a charm--if innocence has an attraction--if youth has a
witchery--all--all--were concentrated in the noble figure and
exquisitely-chiselled countenance of the subject of our sketch. The
colouring of a Titian, the elasticity of a Rubens, the magnificence of a
Michael Angelo Buonaparte."--

"Sneezum, Sneezum!" cried old Morgan, kicking with all his might at the
study-door; and interrupting me before I could exactly settle how the
sentence was to be properly ended--"Come and bid poo