disgusts old Nevil. Still it won't do to stop where they are, like the
cocoa-nut and the pincushion of our friends, the gipsies, on the downs:
so they take arms and commence the journey home, resembling the best of
friends on the evening of a holiday in our native clime--two steps to
the right, half-a-dozen to the left, etcaetera.'

Thus, with scarce a variation from the facts, with but a flowery chaplet
cast on a truthful narrative, as it were, Captain Baskelett could render
ludicrous that which in other quarters had obtained honourable mention.
Nevil and Drew being knocked down by the wind of a ball near the
battery, 'Confound it!' cries Nevil, jumping on his feet, 'it's because
I consented to a compromise!'--a transparent piece of fiction this,
but so in harmony with the character stripped naked for us that it is
accepted. Imagine Nevil's love-affair in such hands! Recovering from
a fever, Nevil sees a pretty French girl in a gondola, and immediately
thinks, 'By jingo, I'm marriageable.' He hears she is engaged. 'By
jingo, she's marriageable too.' He goes through a sum in addition, and
the total is a couple; so he determines on a marriage. 'You can't get it
out of his head; he must be married instantly, and to her, because she
is going to marry somebody else. Sticks to her, follows her, will have
her, in spite of her father, her marquis, her brother, aunts, cousins,
religion, country, and the young woman herself. I assure you, a perfect
model of male fidelity! She is married. He is on her track. He knows his
time will come; he has only to be handy. You see, old Nevil believes in
Providence, is perfectly sure he will one day hear it cry out, "Where's
Beauchamp?"--"Here I am!"--"And here's your marquise!"--"I knew I should
have her at last," says Nevil, calm as Mont Blanc on a reduced scale.'

The secret of Captain Baskelett's art would seem to be to show the
automatic human creature at loggerheads with a necessity that winks at
remarkable pretensions, while condemning it perpetually to doll-like
action. You look on men from your own elevation as upon a quantity of
our little wooden images, unto whom you affix puny characteristics,
under restrictions from which they shall not escape, though they attempt
it with the enterprising vigour of an extended leg, or a pair of raised
arms, or a head awry, or a trick of jumping; and some of them are
extraordinarily addicted to these feats; but for all they do the end is
the sam