That gives you something of the romance of real life for your plot, puts
you chiefly among scenes with which you are familiar, and furnishes you
with characters which have been very sparingly dealt with since the time
of Fielding. You can give us the country Squire, as you remember him in
your youth; it is a specimen of a race worth preserving, the old
idiosyncrasies of which are rapidly dying off, as the railways bring
Norfolk and Yorkshire within easy reach of the manners of London. You
can give us the old-fashioned Parson, as in all essentials he may yet be
found--but before you had to drag him out of the great Tractarian bog;
and, for the rest, I really think that while, as I am told, many popular
writers are doing their best, especially in France, and perhaps a little
in England, to set class against class, and pick up every stone in the
kennel to shy at a gentleman with a good coat on his back, something
useful might be done by a few good-humoured sketches of those innocent
criminals a little better off than their neighbours, whom, however we
dislike them, I take it for granted we shall have to endure, in one shape
or another, as long as civilization exists; and they seem, on the whole,
as good in their present shape as we are likely to get, shake the dice-
box of society how we will."

PISISTRATUS.--"Very well said, sir; but this rural country gentleman life
is not so new as you think. There's Washington Irving--"

MR. CAXTON.--"Charming; but rather the manners of the last century than
this. You may as well cite Addison and Sir Roger de Coverley."

PISISTRATUS.--"'Tremaine' and 'De Vere.'"

MR. CAXTON.--"Nothing can be more graceful, nor more unlike what I mean.
The Pales and Terminus I wish you to put up in the fields are familiar