perfections; Calumny was shamed, and hid his face; the uncles, aunts,
and cousins of the hill-top yonder, were glad to hold their tongues, and
bite their nails in peace: Farmer Floyd and his Mrs. positively came
with peace-offerings--some sausage-meat, elder-wine, jam, and other
dainties, which were to them the choicest sweets of life: and as for
Jonathan, he never felt so proud of Grace in all his life before; the
handsome fellow stood at least a couple of inches taller.

Honest Ben Burke, too, that most important witness--whose coming was as
Blucher's at Waterloo, and secured the well-earned conquest of the
day--though it must be confessed that his appearance was something of
the satyr, still had he been Phoebus Apollo in person, he would
scarcely have excited sincerer admiration. More than one fair creature
sketched his unkempt head, and loudly wished that its owner was a
bandit; more than one bright eye discovered beauty in his open
countenance--though a little soap and water might have made it more
distinguishable. Well--well--honest Ben--they looked, and wisely looked,
at the frank and friendly mind hidden under that rough carcase, and
little wonder that they loved it.

Now, to all this stream of hearty English sympathy, the kind and proper
feeling of young Sir John resolved to give a right direction. His
fashionable friends were gone, except Silliphant and Poynter, both good
fellows in the main, and all the better for the absence (among others)
of that padded old debauchee, Sir Richard Hunt, knight of the order of
St. Sapphira--that frivolous inanity, Lord George Pypp--and that
professed gentleman of gallantry, Mr. Harry Mynton. The follies and the
vices had decamped--had scummed off, so to speak--leaving the more
rectified spirits behind them, to recover at leisure, as best they
might, from all that ferment of dissipation. So, then, there was now