chapter in preference to
anything relating to the mere story of George Barnwell, with which most
readers are familiar.

Up to this passage (extracted from the beginning of Vol. II.) the tale
is briefly thus:

The rogue of a Millwood has come back every day to the grocer's shop in
Chepe, wanting some sugar, or some nutmeg, or some figs, half a dozen
times in the week.

She and George de Barnwell have vowed to each other an eternal
attachment.

This flame acts violently upon George. His bosom swells with ambition.
His genius breaks out prodigiously. He talks about the Good, the
Beautiful, the Ideal, &c., in and out of all season, and is virtuous and
eloquent almost beyond belief--in fact like Devereux, or P. Clifford, or
E. Aram, Esquires.

Inspired by Millwood and love, George robs the till, and mingles in the
world which he is destined to ornament. He outdoes all the dandies,
all the wits, all the scholars, and all the voluptuaries of the age--an
indefinite period of time between Queen Anne and George II.--dines
with Curll at St. John's Gate, pinks Colonel Charteris in a duel behind
Montague House, is initiated into the intrigues of the Chevalier St.
George, whom he entertains at his sumptuous pavilion at Hampstead, and
likewise in disguise at the shop in Cheapside.

His uncle, the owner of the shop, a surly curmudgeon with very little
taste for the True and Beautiful, has retired from business to the
pastoral village in Cambridgeshire from which the noble Barnwells came.
George's cousin Annabel is, of course, consumed with a secret passion
for him.

Some trifling inaccuracies may be remarked in the ensuing brilliant
little chapter; but it must be remembered that the author wished to
present an age at a glance: and the dialogue is quite as fine and
correct as that in the "Last of the Barons," or in "Eugene Aram," or
other works of our author, in which Sentiment and History, or the True
and Beautiful, are united.

CHAPTER XXIV.

BUTTON'S IN PALL MALL.

Those who frequent the dismal and enormous Mansions of Silence which
society has raised to Ennui in that Omphalos of town, Pall Mall, and
which, because they knock you down with their dulness, are called Clubs
no doubt; those who yawn from a bay-window in St. James's Street, at a
half-score of other dandies gaping from another bay-window over the way;
those who consult a dreary evening paper for news, or satisfy themselves
with the jokes of the miserabl