."

The Parson laid aside his cutty-pipe and emptied his fourth tumbler of
toddy; then, throwing back his head in the dreamy fashion of the great
Coleridge when he indulged in a monologue, he thus began, speaking
somewhat through his nose,--

"At the morning of life--"

Here Mivers shrugged his shoulders, turned round on his couch, and
closed his eyes with the sigh of a man resigning himself to a homily.

"At the morning of life, when the dews--"

"I knew the dews were coming," said Mivers. "Dry them, if you please;
nothing so unwholesome. We anticipate what you mean to say, which is
plainly this, When a fellow is sixteen he is very fresh: so he is; pass
on; what then?"

"If you mean to interrupt me with your habitual cynicism," said the
Parson, "why did you ask to hear me?"

"That was a mistake I grant; but who on earth could conceive that you
were going to commence in that florid style? Morning of life indeed!
bosh!"

"Cousin Mivers," said Sir Peter, "you are not reviewing John's style in
'The Londoner;' and I will beg you to remember that my son's morning of
life is a serious thing to his father, and not to be nipped in its bud
by a cousin. Proceed, John!"

Quoth the Parson, good-humouredly, "I will adapt my style to the taste
of my critic. When a fellow is at the age of sixteen, and very fresh
to life, the question is whether he should begin thus prematurely to
exchange the ideas that belong to youth for the ideas that properly
belong to middle age,--whether he should begin to acquire that knowledge
of the world which middle-aged men have acquired and can teach. I think
not. I would rather have him yet a while in the company of the poets;
in the indulgence of glorious hopes and beautiful dreams, forming to
himself some type of the Heroic, which he will keep before his eyes as
a standard when he goes into the world as man. There are two schools of
thought for the formation of character,--the Real and the Ideal. I would
form the character in the Ideal school, in order to make it bolder and
grander and lovelier when it takes its place in that every-day life
which is called Real. And therefore I am not for placing the descendant
of Sir Kenelm Digby, in the interval between school and college, with a
man of the world, probably as cynical as Cousin Mivers and living in the
stony thoroughfares of London."

MR. MIVERS (rousing himself).--"Before we plunge into that Serbonian
bog--the controversy between the Rea