stic with delight, at bearing such angelic pressure; and, as our
heroine cast her ineffably beaming eyes about the dark void, lighting up
with their effulgent rays each little portion of the dungeon, as she
glanced them from one part to another, she perceived that the many
reptiles enclosed with her in this narrow tomb, were nestling to her
side, their eyes fixed upon her in mute expressions of love and
admiration. Her eclipsed orbs were each, for a moment, suffused with a
bright and heavenly tear, and from the suffusion threw out a more
brilliant light upon the feeling reptiles who paid this tribute to her
undeserved sufferings. She put forth her beauteous hand, whose `faint
tracery'--(I stole that from Cooper)--whose faint tracery had so often
given to others the idea that it was ethereal, and not corporeal, and
lifting with all the soft and tender handling of first love a venerable
toad, which smiled upon her, she placed the interesting animal so that
it could crawl up and nestle in her bosom, `Poor child of dank, of
darkness, and of dripping,' exclaimed she, in her flute-like notes, `who
sheltereth thyself under the wet and mouldering wall, so neglected in
thy form by thy mother Nature, repose awhile in peace where princes and
nobles would envy thee, if they knew thy present lot. But that shall
never be; these lips shall never breathe a tale which might endanger thy
existence; fear not, therefore, their enmity, and as thou slowly
creepest away thy little round of circumscribed existence, forget me
not, but shed an occasional pearly tear to the memory of the persecuted,
the innocent Angelicanarinella!'" What d'ye think of that?

_Barnstaple_. Umph! a very warm picture certainly; however, it is
natural. You know, a person of her consequence could never exist
without a little _toadyism_.

_Ansard_. I have a good many subterraneous soliloquies, which would
have been lost for ever, if I did not bring them up.

_Barnstaple_. That one you have just read is enough to make everybody
else bring up.

_Ansard_. I rather plume myself upon it.

_Barnstaple_. Yes, it is a feather in your cap, and will act as a
feather in the throat of your readers.

_Ansard_. Now I'll turn over the second volume, and read you another
_morceau_, in which I assume the more playful vein. I have imitated one
of our modern writers, who must be correct in her language, as she knows
all about heroes and heroines. I must confess that I'