'I don't doubt it,' I replied; 'this is not such a free country as your
father supposes.'

'But am I right?'

'I say nothing about "right,"' I answered, 'except that everybody has a
right to his own opinion. For my part, however, I think the 'Mad Dog'
better than 'John Gilpin' only because it is shorter.'

Whether I was wrong or right in the matter is of no consequence even to
myself; the affection and gratitude of that young creature would more
than repay me for a much greater mistake, if mistake it is. She protests
that I have emancipated her from slavery. She has since talked to me
about all sorts of authors, from Sir Philip Sidney to Washington Irving,
in a way that would make some people's blood run cold; but it has no
such effect upon me--quite the reverse. Of Irving she naïvely remarks
that his strokes of humour seem to her to owe much of their success to
the rarity of their occurrence; the flashes of fun are spread over pages
of dulness, which enhance them, just as a dark night is propitious to
fireworks, or the atmosphere of the House cf Commons, or of a Court of
Law, to a joke. She is often in error, no doubt, but how bright and
wholesome such talk is as compared with the platitudes and commonplaces
which one hears on all sides in connection with literature!

As a rule, I suppose, even people in society ('the drawing-rooms and the
clubs') are not absolutely base and yet one would really think so, to
judge by the fear that is entertained by them of being natural. 'I vow
to heaven,' says the prince of letter-writers, 'that I think the Parrots
of Society are more intolerable and mischievous than its Birds of Prey.
If ever I destroy myself, it will be in the bitterness of having those