dislike several persons, but I hate nobody, living or dead, excepting
Philip II. of Spain. He appears to give me as much trouble as Charles I.
gave the amiable Mr. Dick.

AMONG the delightful men and women whom you are certain to meet at an
English country house there is generally one guest who is supposed to be
preternaturally clever and amusing--"so very droll, don't you know." He
recites things, tells stories in costermonger dialect, and mimics public
characters. He is a type of a class, and I take him to be one of the
elementary forms of animal life, like the acalephae. His presence is
capable of adding a gloom to an undertaker's establishment. The last
time I fell in with him was on a coaching trip through Devon, and in
spite of what I have said I must confess to receiving an instant of
entertainment at his hands. He was delivering a little dissertation on
"the English and American languages." As there were two Americans on
the back seat--it seems we term ourselves "Amurricans"--his choice
of subject was full of tact. It was exhilarating to get a lesson in
pronunciation from a gentleman who said _boult_ for bolt, called St.
John _Sin' Jun_, and did not know how to pronounce the beautiful name of
his own college at Oxford. Fancy a perfectly sober man saying _Maudlin_
for Magdalen! Perhaps the purest English spoken is that of the English
folk who have resided abroad ever since the Elizabethan period, or
thereabouts.

EVERY one has a bookplate these days, and the collectors are after it.
The fool and his bookplate are soon parted. To distribute one's _ex
libris_ is inanely to destroy the only significance it has, that of
indicating the past or present ownership of the volume in which it is
placed.