displayed by this strikingly well-favoured, formal lady, whose heart of
hearts demanded for her as spouse, a lord, a philosopher, and a
Christian, in one: and he must be a member of Parliament. Hence her
isolated air.

Now, when the ladies of Brookfield heard that their Pole, Polar, and
North Pole, the splendid image of themselves, had been transformed by the
Tinleys, and defiled by them to Pole, Polony, and Maypole, they should
have laughed contemptuously; but the terrible nerve of ridicule quivered
in witness against them, and was not to be stilled. They could not
understand why so coarse a thing should affect them. It stuck in their
flesh. It gave them the idea that they saw their features hideous, but
real, in a magnifying mirror.

There was therefore a feud between the Tinleys and the Poles; and when
Mr. Pericles entirely gave up the former, the latter rewarded him by
spreading abroad every possible kind interpretation of his atrocious bad
manners. He was a Greek, of Parisian gilding, whose Parisian hat flew
off at a moment's notice, and whose savage snarl was heard at the
slightest vexation. His talk of renowned prime-donne by their Christian
names, and the way that he would catalogue emperors, statesmen, and
noblemen known to him, with familiar indifference, as things below the
musical Art, gave a distinguishing tone to Brookfield, from which his
French accentuation of our tongue did not detract.

Mr. Pericles grimaced bitterly at any claim to excellence being set up
for the mysterious voice in the woods. Tapping one forefinger on the
uplifted point of the other, he observed that to sing abroad in the night
air of an English Spring month was conclusive of imbecility; and that no
imbecile sang at all. Because, to sing, involved the highest