dinary guise, to take a country walk. He took the path which they
were going themselves, and they tried to keep behind him; but they
walked too briskly, and he too leisurely, to allow of that. It is very
difficult duly to delineate a bore in a narrative, for the very reason
that he _is_ a bore. A tale must aim at condensation, but a bore acts in
solution. It is only on the long-run that he is ascertained. Then,
indeed, he is _felt_; he is oppressive; like the sirocco, which the
native detects at once, while a foreigner is often at fault. _Tenet
occiditque._ Did you hear him make but one speech, perhaps you would say
he was a pleasant, well-informed man; but when he never comes to an end,
or has one and the same prose every time you meet him, or keeps you
standing till you are fit to sink, or holds you fast when you wish to
keep an engagement, or hinders you listening to important
conversation,--then there is no mistake, the truth bursts on you,
_apparent dirae facies_, you are in the clutches of a bore. You may
yield, or you may flee; you cannot conquer. Hence it is clear that a
bore cannot be represented in a story, or the story would be the bore as
much as he. The reader, then, must believe this upright Mr. Bateman to
be what otherwise he might not discover, and thank us for our
consideration in not proving as well as asserting it.

Sheffield bowed to him courteously, and would have proceeded on his way;
but Bateman, as became his nature, would not suffer it; he seized him.
"Are you disposed," he said, "to look into the pretty chapel we are
restoring on the common? It is quite a gem--in the purest style of the
fourteenth century. It was in a most filthy condition, a mere cow-house;
but we have made a subscription, and set it to rights."

"We are bound for Oxley," Sheffield answered; "you would be taking us
out of our way."

"Not a bit of it," said Bateman; "it's not a stone's throw from the
road; you must not refuse me. I'm sure you'll like it."

He proceeded to give the history of the chapel--all it had been, all it
might have been, all it was not, all it was to be.

"It is to be a real specimen of a Catholic chapel," he said; "we mean to
make the attempt of getting the Bishop to dedicate it to the Royal
Martyr--why should not we have our St. Charles as well as the
Romanists?--and it will be quite sweet to hear the vesper-bell tolling
over the sullen moor every evening, in all weathers, and amid all the
changes