to spare in him upon the fictitious love--sorrows of Bond Street and St.
James's. Sir, chivalry ceased when the Press rose! And to fasten upon
me, as a forefather, out of all men who ever lived and sinned, the very
man who has most destroyed what I most valued,--who, by the Lord! with
his cursed invention has well-nigh got rid of respect for forefathers
altogether,--is a cruelty of which my brother had never been capable if
that printer's devil had not got hold of him!"

That a man in this blessed nineteenth century should be such a Vandal,
and that my Uncle Roland should talk in a strain that Totila would have
been ashamed of, within so short a time after my father's scientific and
erudite oration on the Hygeiana of Books,--was enough to make one
despair of the progress of intellect and the perfectibility of our
species. And I have no manner of doubt that, all the while, my uncle
had a brace of books in his pockets, Robert Hall one of them! In truth,
he had talked himself into a passion, and did not know what nonsense he
was saying. But this explosion of Captain Roland's has shattered the
thread of my matter. Pouff! I must take breath and begin again.

Yes, in spite of my sauciness, the old soldier evidently took to me more
and more. And besides our critical examination of the property and the
pedigree, he carried me with him on long excursions to distant villages
where some memorial of a defunct Caxton, a coat of arms, or an epitaph
on a tombstone, might be still seen. And he made me pore over
topographical works and county histories (forgetful, Goth that he was,
that for those very authorities he was indebted to the repudiated
printer!) to find some anecdote of his beloved dead! In truth, the
county for miles round bore the vestigia of those old Caxtons; their
handwriting was on many a broken wall. And obscure as they all were,
compared to that great operative of the Sanctuary at Westminster whom my