to talk about professional matters, and how well she turned the
conversation! By the way, she talked about professional matters herself;
but then with what fun and humour she told the story of her comrade,
Pentweazle, as he was called! There is no humour like Irish humour. Her
father is rather tedious, but thoroughly amiable; and how fine of him,
giving lessons in fencing after he quitted the army, where he was the pet
of the Duke of Kent! Fencing! I should like to continue my fencing, or I
shall forget what Angelo taught me. Uncle Arthur always liked me to fence
--he says it is the exercise of a gentleman. Hang it. I'll take some
lessons of Captain Costigan. Go along, Rebecca--up the hill, old lady.
Pendennis, Pendennis--how she spoke the word! Emily, Emily! how good, how
noble, how beautiful, how perfect, she is!"

Now the reader, who has had the benefit of overhearing the entire
conversation which Pen had with Miss Fotheringay, can judge for himself
about the powers of her mind, and may perhaps be disposed to think that
she has not said anything astonishingly humorous or intellectual in the
course of the above interview. She has married, and taken her position in
the world as the most spotless and irreproachable lady since, and I have
had the pleasure of making her acquaintance: and must certainly own,
against my friend Pen's opinion, that his adored Emily is not a clever
woman. The truth is, she had not only never heard of Kotzebue, but she
had never heard of Farquhar, or Congreve, or any dramatist in whose plays
she had not a part: and of these dramas she only knew the part which
concerned herself. A wag once told her that Dante was born at Algiers:
and asked her,--which Dr. Johnson wrote first, 'Irene,' or 'Every Man in
his Humour.' But she had the best of the joke, for she had never heard of
Irene or Every Man in his Humour, or Dante, or perhaps Algiers. It was
all one to her. She acted what little Bows told her--where he told her to
sob, she sobbed--where he told her to laugh, she laughed. She gave the