When his subjects, encouraged by his familiarity, had discarded their
precaution, the wayward fit would seize him, a sudden cloud overspread
his brow, his voice transform from the pleasant to the terrible, and a
quarrel of a straw immediately ensue with the first man whose face he
did not like. The pleasure that resulted to others from the exuberant
sallies of his imagination was, therefore, not unalloyed with sudden
qualms of apprehension and terror. It may be believed that this
despotism did not gain its final ascendancy without being contested in
the outset. But all opposition was quelled with a high hand by this
rural Antaeus. By the ascendancy of his fortune, and his character among
his neighbours, he always reduced his adversary to the necessity of
encountering him at his own weapons, and did not dismiss him without
making him feel his presumption through every joint in his frame. The
tyranny of Mr. Tyrrel would not have been so patiently endured, had not
his colloquial accomplishments perpetually come in aid of that authority
which his rank and prowess originally obtained.

The situation of our squire with the fair was still more enviable than
that which he maintained among persons of his own sex. Every mother
taught her daughter to consider the hand of Mr. Tyrrel as the highest
object of her ambition. Every daughter regarded his athletic form and
his acknowledged prowess with a favourable eye. A form eminently
athletic is, perhaps, always well proportioned; and one of the
qualifications that women are early taught to look for in the male sex,
is that of a protector. As no man was adventurous enough to contest his
superiority, so scarcely any woman in this provincial circle would have
scrupled to prefer his addresses to those of any other admirer. His
boisterous wit had peculiar charms for them; and there was no spectacle
more flattering to their vanity, than seeing this Hercules exchange his
club for a distaff. It was pleasing to them to consider, that the fangs