fanciullo, 'that there are
no handsome prisons'! Did not the son of that celebrated Frenchman,
surnamed Bras de Fer, write a book not only to prove that adversities
are more necessary than prosperities, but that among all adversities a
prison is the most pleasant and profitable? But is not this condition of
mine, voluntarily and experimentally incurred, a type of my life? Is
it the first time that I have thrust myself into a hobble? And if in a
hobble of mine own choosing, why should I blame the gods?"

Upon this, Dr. Riceabocca fell into a train of musing so remote from
time and place, that in a few minutes he no more remembered that he was
in the parish stocks than a lover remembers that flesh is grass, a miser
that mammon is perishable, a philosopher that wisdom is vanity. Dr.
Riccabocca was in the clouds.

CHAPTER X.

The dullest dog that ever wrote a novel (and, entre nous, reader)--but
let it go no further,--we have a good many dogs among the fraternity
that are not Munitos might have seen with half an eye that the parson's
discourse had produced a very genial and humanizing effect upon his
audience.

[Munito was the name of a dog famous for his learning (a Porson of a
dog) at the date of my childhood. There are no such dogs nowadays.]

When all was over, and the congregation stood up to let Mr. Hazeldean
and his family walk first down the aisle (for that was the custom at
Hazeldean), moistened eyes glanced at the squire's sun-burned manly
face, with a kindness that bespoke revived memory of many a generous
benefit and ready service. The head might be wrong now and then,--the
heart was in the right place after all. And the lady leaning on his arm
came in for a large share of that gracious good feeling. True, she now
and then gave a little offence when the cottages were not so clean as
she fancied they ought to be,--and poor folks don't like a liberty taken
with their houses any more than the rich do; true that she was not quite
so popular with the women as the squire was, for, if the husband went
too often to the ale-house, she always laid the fault on the wife,
and said, "No man would go out of doors for his comforts, if he had
a smiling face and a clean hearth at his home;" whereas the squire
maintained the more gallant opinion that "If Gill was a shrew, it was
because Jack did not, as in duty bound, stop her mouth with a kiss!"
Still, notwithstanding these more obnoxious notions on her part, a