headpiece, how strange to assume for a moment some one's--any one's--to
be a man of valour who has ruled the Empire; to refer while Brangaena
sings to the fragments of Sophocles, or see in a flash, as the shepherd
pipes his tune, bridges and aqueducts. But no--we must choose. Never was
there a harsher necessity! or one which entails greater pain, more
certain disaster; for wherever I seat myself, I die in exile: Whittaker
in his lodging-house; Lady Charles at the Manor.

A young man with a Wellington nose, who had occupied a seven-and-
sixpenny seat, made his way down the stone stairs when the opera ended,
as if he were still set a little apart from his fellows by the influence
of the music.

At midnight Jacob Flanders heard a rap on his door.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed. "You're the very man I want!" and without more
ado they discovered the lines which he had been seeking all day; only
they come not in Virgil, but in Lucretius.

"Yes; that should make him sit up," said Bonamy, as Jacob stopped
reading. Jacob was excited. It was the first time he had read his essay
aloud.

"Damned swine!" he said, rather too extravagantly; but the praise had
gone to his head. Professor Bulteel, of Leeds, had issued an edition of
Wycherley without stating that he had left out, disembowelled, or
indicated only by asterisks, several indecent words and some indecent
phrases. An outrage, Jacob said; a breach of faith; sheer prudery; token
of a lewd mind and a disgusting nature. Aristophanes and Shakespeare
were cited. Modern life was repudiated. Great play was made with the