hink I should not care
a farthing for the embroidered silk gown, more than for an old woman's
apron, unless I had hopes that thou shouldst be walking the boards to
admire, and perhaps to envy me.

That this may be the case, I prithee--beware! See not a Dulcinea, in
every slipshod girl, who, with blue eyes, fair hair, a tattered plaid,
and a willow-wand in her grip, drives out the village cows to the
loaning. Do not think you will meet a gallant Valentine in every English
rider, or an Orson in every Highland drover. View things as they are,
and not as they may be magnified through thy teeming fancy. I have seen
thee look at an old gravel pit, till thou madest out capes, and bays,
and inlets, crags and precipices, and the whole stupendous scenery of
the Isle of Feroe, in what was, to all ordinary eyes, a mere horse-pond.
Besides, did I not once find thee gazing with respect at a lizard, in
the attitude of one who looks upon a crocodile? Now this is, doubtless,
so far a harmless exercise of your imagination; for the puddle cannot
drown you, nor the Lilliputian alligator eat you up. But it is different
in society, where you cannot mistake the character of those you converse
with, or suffer your fancy to exaggerate their qualities, good or bad,
without exposing yourself not only to ridicule, but to great and serious
inconveniences. Keep guard, therefore, on your imagination, my dear
Darsie; and let your old friend assure you, it is the point of your
character most pregnant with peril to its good and generous owner.
Adieu! let not the franks of the worthy peer remain unemployed; above
all, SIS MEMOR MEI. A. F.

LETTER III

DARSIE LATIMER TO ALAN FAIRFORD

SHEPHERD'S BUSH.

I have received thine absurd and most conceited epistle. It is well
for thee that, Lovelace and Belford-like, we came under a convention
to pardon every species of liberty which we may take with each other;
since, upon my word, there are some reflections in your last which would
otherwise have obliged me to return forthwith to Edinburgh, merely to
show you I was not what you took me for.

Why, what a pair of prigs hast thou made of us! I plunging into scrapes,
without having courage to get out of them--thy sagacious self, afraid
to put one foot before the other, lest it should run away from its
companion; and so standing still like a post, out of mere faintness
and coldness of heart, while all the world were driving full speed past
thee. Thou