ough with impaired health and
impoverished fortune.

Mr. Winterblossom now lived upon a moderate annuity, and had discovered
a way of reconciling his economy with much company and made dishes, by
acting as perpetual president of the table-d'hote at the Well. Here he
used to amuse the society by telling stories about Garrick, Foote,
Bonnel Thornton, and Lord Kelly, and delivering his opinions in matters
of taste and vertu. An excellent carver, he knew how to help each guest
to what was precisely his due; and never failed to reserve a proper
slice as the reward of his own labours. To conclude, he was possessed of
some taste in the fine arts, at least in painting and music, although it
was rather of the technical kind, than that which warms the heart and
elevates the feelings. There was, indeed, about Winterblossom, nothing
that was either warm or elevated. He was shrewd, selfish, and sensual;
the last two of which qualities he screened from observation, under a
specious varnish of exterior complaisance. Therefore, in his professed
and apparent anxiety to do the honours of the table, to the most
punctilious point of good breeding, he never permitted the attendants
upon the public taste to supply the wants of others, until all his own
private comforts had been fully arranged and provided for.

Mr. Winterblossom was also distinguished for possessing a few curious
engravings, and other specimens of art, with the exhibition of which he
occasionally beguiled a wet morning at the public room. They were
collected, "_viis et modis_," said the Man of Law, another distinguished
member of the Committee, with a knowing cock of his eye to his next
neighbour.

Of this person little need be said. He was a large-boned, loud-voiced,
red-faced man, named Meiklewham; a country writer, or attorney, who
managed the matters of the Squire much to the profit of one or
other,--if not of both. His nose projected from the front of his broad
vulgar face, like the stile of an old sun-dial, twisted all of one side.
He was as great a bully in his profession, as if it had been military
instead of civil: conducted the whole technicalities concerning the
cutting up the Saint's-Well-haugh, so much lamented by Dame Dods, into
building-stances, and was on excellent terms with Doctor Quackleben, who
always recommended him to make the wills of his patients.

After the Man of Law comes Captain Mungo MacTurk, a Highland lieutenant
on half-pay, and that of anc