stioned its wisdom. He noted that the statuary
was not her property, but that of the Crystal Palace. Of the
other communicants, none, I think, had the very slightest notion
what the objects were that Susan had smashed, or tried to smash,
and frankly maintained that they thought her conduct magnificent.
As for me, I had gathered by persistent inquiry enough
information to know that what her sacrilegious parasol had
attacked were bodies of my mysterious friends, the Greek gods,
and if all the rest of the village applauded iconoclastic Susan,
I at least would be ardent on the other side.

But I was conscious that there was nobody in the world to whom I
could go for sympathy. If I had ever read 'Hellas' I should have
murmured

Apollo, Pan and Love,
And even Olympian Jove,
Grew weak, when killing Susan glared on them.

On the day in question, I was unable to endure the drawing-room
meeting to its close, but, clutching my volume of the Funereal
Poets, I made a dash for the garden. In the midst of a mass of
laurels, a clearing had been hollowed out, where ferns were grown
and a garden-seat was placed. There was no regular path to this
asylum; one dived under the snake-like boughs of the laurel and
came up again in absolute seclusion.

Into this haunt I now fled to meditate about the savage godliness
of that vandal, Susan Flood. So extremely ignorant was I that I
supposed her to have destroyed the originals of the statues,
marble and unique. I knew nothing about plaster casts, and I
thought the damage (it is possible that there had really been no
damage whatever) was of an irreparable character. I sank into the
seat, with the great wall of laurels whispering around me, and I
burst into tears. There was something, surely, quaint and
pathetic in the figure of a little Plymouth Brother sitting in
that advanced year of grace, weeping bitterly for indignities
done to Hermes and to Aphrodite. Then I opened my book for
consolation, and I read a great block of pompous verse out of
'The Deity', in the midst of which exercise, yielding to the
softness of the hot and aromatic air, I fell fast asleep.

Among those who applauded the zeal of Susan Flood's parasol, the
Pagets were prominent. These were a retired Baptist minister and
his wife, from Exmouth, who had lately settled amongst us, and
joined in the breaking of bread. Mr. Paget was a fat old man,
whose round pale face was clean-shaven, and who carried a full
crop