Crotchet Castle

n all my li

so profane a

e, another to the novelties of embellishment; others unoccupied, and at the disposal of the company. The walls were covered with a copious collection of ancient and modern books; the ancient having been selected and arranged by the Reverend Docto

wl was turning over the leaves for Miss Crotchet; the Captain was performing the same office for Lady Clarinda, but with so much more attention to the lady than the book, that he often made sad work with th

ical economy to the Reverend Doctor Folliott, who

ful for man in this world was loyal and pious education; the giving men good books to read, and enough of the hornbook to read them; with a judicious interspersion of the lessons of Old Restraint, which was his poetic

forting him with a disquisition to prove that there were only four animals having the power to communicate hydrophobia, of which the cat was one; and that it was not necessary that t

hat must be engendered by the operation. Mr. Toogood had begun explaining his diagrams to Sir Simon Steeltrap; but Sir Simon grew testy, and told Mr. Toogood that the promulgators of such doctrines ought to be consigned to the treadmill. The philanthropist walked off from the country gentleman, and proceeded to hold forth to young

ined," but which Nature herself had intended for the noddles of porcelain mandarins, promulgated simultaneously from the east and the west of London, an order that no plaster-of-Paris Venus should appear in the streets without petticoats. Mr. Crotchet, on reading this order in the evening paper, which, by the postman's early arrival, was always laid on his breakfast-table, determined to fill his

eration that it would be for the credit of his cloth, with some of his vice-suppressing neighbours, to be able to say that he had expostulated; or by curiosity, to try what sort of defence his city-bred friend, who knew the classics only by translations, and whose reason was always a little ahead of his knowledge, would make for his somewhat ost

elpiece, Mr. Crotchet, and those large figures in the niches-may

s, sir; nothing mo

t.-May I ask you, si

eman's house being in it at all; from the paper on the walls, and the drapery of the curtains, e

and to know that you may open it if you please, and need not open it unless you please. It is a resource against ennui, if ennui should come upon you. To have the resource and not to feel the ennui, to enjoy your bottle in the present, and your book in the indefinite future, is a delightful condition of human existence. There is no place, in which a man can move or sit, in which the outside of a book can be otherwise than an in

entire contour of the figure, the flow of the hair on the shoulders and nec

perhaps, it is as delicate as whitebait i

othing can be m

make no doubt, the pious cheesemonger, who recently broke its plaster facsimile over the head of the itinerant vendor, was

nion, the cheesemonger was a fool, and th

l, sir, is a harsh term: c

the cheesemonger nor the ju

liott.-Sir, we a

libeller; the lawyer of his client; the statesman of his colleague; the bubble-blower of the bubbl

But to return to the point. Now these two large figures, one with drapery on the lower half of the body, and the other with no drapery at all; upon my word, sir, it matters not what godfat

nd I say, sir, that figure realises the finest imaginings of Plato, and is the personification of the most ref

ittle better than a misleader of youth; and they have shown their contempt for him, not only by never reading him (a mode of contempt in which they deal very largely), but even by never printing a complete edit

chet.-We

d to have read Plato, or, indeed, to be ever likely to do so, I would very willingly show these figures; because to such they would, I grant you, be the outward and visible

let the multitude look up

shed my footman to learn modesty, I should not

have cant; where they had anything that exalts, delights, or adorns humanity, we have nothing but cant, cant, cant. And, sir, to show my contempt for cant in all its shapes, I have

growing warm. Pray be cool. Nothing contributes so muc

ng men; and they grew up, as the wise Lycurgus had foreseen, into t

hing, and they grew up into wives who stayed at home-stayed at home, sir; and l

were such very insipid persons that the husband would not go home t

very different persons, s

y, sir; but both too goo

liott.-Sir, Lais

me Aspasia and any other Athenian nam

the sort of person I like, as I have already implied, is a modes

y scruple about sitting as models to Praxiteles; as you know, sir, very modest women in Italy did to Canova; one of whom, an Ita

r dear Mrs. Folliott -: sir, in return for your story, I will tell you a story of my ancestor, Gilbert Folliott. The devil haunted him, as he did Saint F

devil, in the likeness of a fair damsel, with short petticoats and no stomacher, w

olliott.-Bless

Give me leave,

Folliott.-Who

osopher, the father of the Encyclop?dia, of all

, sir, a terrible progeny: they

he great philos

after my heart. Keep to the Greeks, if you plea

rue to nature. And why are they so superior in that point to all modern works, with all our greater knowledg

I shall take the liberty to employ, on this occasion, the argumentum ad h

tchet.-

g up his heels, with the premeditated design of giving emphasis to his exclamation; but by miscalculating his imp