ittle _demireps_ of science, who fancied that not to be
ashamed was now as much a proof of knowledge, as in our first parents it
was of innocence, and who eyed the figure without turning away from it or
blushing, he quitted the room with disgust, and returned home quite
satisfied with one _conversazione_.

I am not partial to blues: generally speaking, ladies do not take up
science until they find that the men will not take up them; and a
remarkably clever woman by reputation is too often a remarkably unpleasant
or a remarkably ugly one. But there are exceptions; exceptions that a
nation may be proud of--women who can fulfil their duties to their husbands
and their children, to their God and to their neighbour, although endowed
with minds more powerful than is allotted to one man in tens of thousands.
These are heavenly blues; and, among the few, no one shines more
pre-eminent than my dear Mrs S----e.

However, whether Newton was satisfied or not, this _conversazione_ was a
finisher to Dr Feasible, who resigned the contest. Dr Plausible not only
carried away the palm--but, what was still worse, he carried off the
"practice!"

Chapter XLV

"Their only labour is to kill the time;
And labour dire it is, and weary woe.
They sit--they lounge--turn o'er some idle rhyme:
Then rising sudden--to the glass they go,
Or saunter forth with loitering step and slow."

_Castle of Indolence_.

Captain Oughton, who commanded the _Windsor Castle_, was an original. His
figure was short and thick-set, his face broad, and deeply pitted with the
small-pox; his nose, an apology for a nose, being a small tubercle arising
midway between his eyes and mouth, the former of which were small, the
latter wide, and displaying a magnificent row of white teeth. On the whole,
it was impossible to look in his face without being immediately struck with
his likeness to a bull-dog. His temperament and his pursuits were also
analogous; he was a great pugilist, knew the merits of every man in the
ring, and the precise date and circumstances attending every battle which
had been fought for the previous thirty years. His conversation was at all
times interlarded with the slang terms appropriated to the science to which
he was so devoted. In other points he was a brave and trustworthy officer,
although he valued the practical above the theoretical branches of his
profession, and was better pleased when superintending the mousing