was standing on end at the bare imagination of the mass of malaria
that must be engendered by the operation. Mr. Toogood had begun
explaining his diagrams to Sir Simon Steeltrap; but Sir Simon grew
testy, and told Mr. Toogood that the promulgators of such doctrines
ought to be consigned to the treadmill. The philanthropist walked
off from the country gentleman, and proceeded to hold forth to
young Crotchet, who stood silent, as one who listens, but in
reality without hearing a syllable. Mr. Crotchet, senior, as the
master of the house, was left to entertain himself with his own
meditations, till the Reverend Doctor Folliott tore himself from
Mr. Mac Quedy, and proceeded to expostulate with Mr. Crotchet on a
delicate topic.

There was an Italian painter, who obtained the name of Il
Bragatore, by the superinduction of inexpressibles on the naked
Apollos and Bacchuses of his betters. The fame of this worthy
remained one and indivisible, till a set of heads, which had been,
by a too common mistake of Nature's journeymen, stuck upon
magisterial shoulders, as the Corinthian capitals of "fair round
bellies with fat capon lined," but which Nature herself had
intended for the noddles of porcelain mandarins, promulgated
simultaneously from the east and the west of London, an order that
no plaster-of-Paris Venus should appear in the streets without
petticoats. Mr. Crotchet, on reading this order in the evening
paper, which, by the postman's early arrival, was always laid on
his breakfast-table, determined to fill his house with Venuses of
all sizes and kinds. In pursuance of this resolution, came
packages by water-carriage, containing an infinite variety of
Venuses. There were the Medicean Venus, and the Bathing Venus; the
Uranian Venus, and the Pandemian Venus; the Crouching Venus, and