ool and been sorry--then, sir, you are a wiseacre
who won't waste your time over an idle novel, and it is not de te that
the fable is narrated at all.

Not that it was just on Sir Miles's part to turn upon George, and be
angry with his nephew for refusing the offer of promotion made by his
Royal Highness, for Sir Miles himself had agreed in George's view of
pursuing quite other than a military career, and it was in respect to
this plan of her son's that Madam Esmond had written from Virginia
to Sir Miles Warrington. George had announced to her his intention of
entering at the Temple, and qualifying himself for the magisterial
and civil duties which, in the course of nature, he would be called to
fulfil; nor could any one applaud his resolution more cordially than his
uncle Sir Miles, who introduced George to a lawyer of reputation, under
whose guidance we may fancy the young gentleman reading leisurely.
Madam Esmond from home signified her approval of her son's course, fully
agreeing with Sir Miles (to whom and his lady she begged to send her
grateful remembrances) that the British Constitution was the envy of
the world, and the proper object of every English gentleman's admiring
study. The chief point to which George's mother objected was the notion
that Mr. Warrington should have to sit down in the Temple dinner-ball,
and cut at a shoulder of mutton, and drink small-beer out of tin
pannikins, by the side of rough students who wore gowns like the
parish-clerk. George's loyal younger brother shared too this repugnance.
Anything was good enough for him, Harry said; he was a younger son, and
prepared to rough it; but George, in a gown, and dining in a mess with
three nobody's sons off dirty pewter platters! Harry never could relish
this condescension on his brother's part, or fancy George in his proper
place at any except the high table; and was sorry that a plan Madam
Esmond hinted at in her letters was not feasible--viz., that an
application should be made to the Master of the Temple, who should be
informed that Mr. George Warrington was a gentleman of most noble birth,
and of great property in America, and ought only to sit with the very
best company in the Hall. Rather to Harry's discomfiture, when he
communicated his own and his mother's ideas to the gentlemen's new
coffee-house friend, Mr. Spencer, Mr. Spencer received the proposal with
roars of laughter; and I cannot learn, from the Warrington papers, that
any appl