thousand readers caught, the infection.
Sentimentality was the disease which then required to be expelled. The
reign of Sterne is past. Sensibility is discarded, and with it the
softness which it must be confessed belonged to it. Romance is vanished,
and with it the heroic, though somewhat unnatural, elevation which
accompanied it. We have little to regret in the loss of either; nor have
we much cause to rejoice in what we have gained by the exchange. A
pervading and substantial selfishness, the striking characteristic of
our day, is no great improvement on the wildness of the old romance, or
the vapid puling of the sentimental school."

"Surely," said I (L'Almanac des Gourmands at that instant darting across
my mind), "it is as honorable for a gentleman to excel in critical as in
culinary skill. It is as noble to cultivate the intellectual taste, as
that of the palate. It is at least as creditable to discuss the
comparative merits of Sophocles and Shakspeare, as the rival ingredients
of a soup or a sauce. I will even venture to affirm that it is as
dignified an amusement to run a tilt in favor of Virgil or Tasso against
their assailants, as to run a barouche against a score of rival
barouches; and though I own that, in Gulliver's land of the Houyhnhnms,
the keeping up the breed of horses might have been the nobler
patriotism, yet in Great Britain it is hitherto, at least, no
contemptible exertion of skill and industry 'to keep up the breed of
gentlemen.'"

CHAPTER XXIX.

I strolled out alone, intending to call at the Rectory, but was
prevented by meeting the worthy Dr. Barlow, who was coming to the Grove.
I could not lose so fair an opportunity of introducing a subject that
was seldom absent from my thoughts. I found it was a subject on which I
had no new discoveries to impart. He told me he had seen and rejoiced in
the election my heart had made. I was surprised at his penetration. He
smiled, and told me he "took no great credit for his sagacity in
perceiving what was obvious to spectators far more indifferent than
himself; that I resembled those animals who, by hiding their heads in
the earth, fancied nobody could see them."

I asked him a thousand questions about Lucilla, whose fine mind I knew
he had in some measure contributed to form. I inquired, with an
eagerness which he called jealousy, who were her admirers? "As many men
as have seen her," replied he; "I know no man who has so many rivals as
you