of millions more, with its caked outside of grime, and the inward
substance incessantly kicking the lid, prankish, but never casting it
off. A good stew, you perceive; not a parlous boiling. Weak as we may be
in our domestic cookery, our political has been sagaciously adjusted as
yet to catch the ardours of the furnace without being subject to their
volcanic activities.

That the social is also somewhat at fault, we have proof in occasional
outcries over the absence of these or those particular persons famous
for inspiriting. It sticks and clogs. The improvising songster is
missed, the convivial essayist, the humorous Dean, the travelled cynic,
and he, the one of his day, the iridescent Irishman, whose remembered
repartees are a feast, sharp and ringing, at divers tables descending
from the upper to the fat citizen's, where, instead of coming in the
sequence of talk, they are exposed by blasting, like fossil teeth of old
Deluge sharks in monotonous walls of our chalk-quarries. Nor are these
the less welcome for the violence of their introduction among a people
glad to be set burning rather briskly awhile by the most unexpected of
digs in the ribs. Dan Merion, to give an example. That was Dan Merion's
joke with the watchman: and he said that other thing to the Marquis of
Kingsbury, when the latter asked him if he had ever won a donkey-race.
And old Dan is dead, and we are the duller for it! which leads to the
question: Is genius hereditary? And the affirmative and negative are
respectively maintained, rather against the Yes is the dispute, until
a member of the audience speaks of Dan Merion's having left a daughter
reputed for a sparkling wit not much below the level of his own. Why,
are you unaware that the Mrs. Warwick of that scandal case of Warwick
versus Dannisburgh was old Dan Merion's girl--and his only child? It
is true; for a friend had it from a man who had it straight from Mr.
Braddock, of the firm of Braddock, Thorpe and Simnel, her solicitors in
the action, who told him he could sit listening to her for hours, and
that she was as innocent as day; a wonderful combination of a good woman
and a clever woman and a real beauty. Only her misfortune was to have
a furiously jealous husband, and they say he went mad after hearing the
verdict.

Diana was talked of in the London circles. A witty woman is such salt
that where she has once been tasted she must perforce be missed more
than any of the absent, the dowerin