read his letters. The first he took up was from a lady.
"Always a she correspondent for me," says Isaac Disraeli, "provided she
does not cross." Brian's correspondence did not cross, but
notwithstanding this, after reading half a page of small talk and
scandal, he flung the letter on the table with an impatient
ejaculation. The other letters were principally business ones, but the
last one proved to be from Calton, and Fitzgerald opened it with a
sensation of pleasure. Calton was a capital letter-writer, and his
epistles had done much to cheer Fitzgerald in the dismal period which
succeeded his acquittal of Whyte's murder, when he was in danger of
getting into a morbid state of mind. Brian, therefore, sipped his
brandy and soda, and, lying back in his chair, prepared to enjoy
himself.

"My dear Fitzgerald," wrote Calton his peculiarly clear handwriting,
which was such an exception to the usual crabbed hieroglyphics of his
brethren of the bar, "while you are enjoying the cool breezes and
delightful freshness of the country, here am I, with numerous other
poor devils, cooped up in this hot and dusty city. How I wish I were
with you in the land of Goschen, by the rolling waters of the Murray,
where everything is bright and green, and unsophisticated--the two
latter terms are almost identical--instead of which my view is bounded
by bricks and mortar, and the muddy waters of the Yarra have to do duty
for your noble river. Ah! I too have lived in Arcadia, but I don't now:
and even if some power gave me the choice to go back again, I am not
sure that I would accept. Arcadia, after all, is a lotus-eating
Paradise of blissful ignorance, and I love the world with its pomps,
vanities, and wickedness. While you, therefore, oh Corydon--don't be
afraid, I'm not going to quote Virgil--are studying Nature's book, I am
deep in the musty leaves of Themis' volume, but I dare say that the
great mother teaches you much better things than her artificial
daughter does me. However, you remember that pithy proverb, 'When one
is in Rome, one must not speak ill of the Pope,' so being in the legal
profession, I must respect its muse. I suppose when you saw that this
letter came from a law office, you wondered what the deuce a lawyer was
writing to you for, and my handwriting, no doubt suggested a
writ--pshaw! I am wrong there, you are past the age of writs--not that
I hint that you are old; by no means--you are just at that appreciative
age when