"See! You see it every day, my dear fellow; only the trick is better
done, and Lady Kicklebury is rather a clumsy practitioner. See! why
nobody is better aware of the springes which are set to catch him than
that young fellow himself, who is as knowing as any veteran in May Fair.
And you don't suppose that Lady Kicklebury fancies that she is doing
anything mean, or anything wrong? Heaven bless you! she never did
anything wrong in her life. She has no idea but that everything she
says, and thinks, and does is right. And no doubt she never did rob a
church: and was a faithful wife to Sir Thomas, and pays her tradesmen.
Confound her virtue! It is that which makes her so wonderful--that brass
armor in which she walks impenetrable--not knowing what pity is, or
charity; crying sometimes when she is vexed, or thwarted, but laughing
never; cringing, and domineering by the same natural instinct--never
doubting about herself above all. Let us rise, and revolt against those
people, Lankin. Let us war with them, and smite them utterly. It is to
use against these, especially, that Scorn and Satire were invented."

"And the animal you attack," says Lankin, "is provided with a hide to
defend him--it is a common ordinance of nature."

And so we pass by tower and town, and float up the Rhine. We don't
describe the river. Who does not know it? How you see people asleep in
the cabins at the most picturesque parts, and angry to be awakened when
they fire off those stupid guns for the echoes! It is as familiar to
numbers of people as Greenwich; and we know the merits of the inns along
the road as if they were the "Trafalgar" or the "Star and Garter." How
stale everything grows! If we were to live in a garden of Eden, now, and
the gate were open, we should go out, and tramp forward, and push on,
and get up early in the morning, and push on again--anything to keep
moving, anything to get a change: anything but quiet for the restless
children of Cain.

So many thousands of English folks have been at Rougetnoirbourg in this
and last seasons, that it is scarcely needful to alter the name of that
pretty little gay, wicked place. There were so many British barristers
there this year that they called the "Hotel des Quatre Saisons"
the "Hotel of Quarter Sessions." There were judges and their wives,
serjeants and their ladies, Queen's counsel learned in the law, the
Northern circuit and the Western circuit: there were officers of
half-pay and