404 Crotchet Castle. [APRIL, 



of town filth ; and has never experienced attacks of indigestion from 

 too hastily bolting the miscellaneous contributions of a hundred Fleet 

 Ditches. In its outer Adam it is symmetry itself; in flavour it smacks of 

 the pure mountain air, which no town or city smoke has ever yet pre- 

 sumed to pollute. But indeed every way it is superior to its Saxon 

 kinsman. Its habits are more shy, more delicate ; it keeps little or no 

 company ; goes to bed at an early hour, and is consequently more healthy 

 in constitution ; and, above all, is a thousand times more fastidious in its 

 choice of diet. It will never, for instance, take up with a bit of rancid 

 bacon, as a Windsor salmon of our acquaintance once did. Still less 

 will it bolt a sausage, as was the case with a Henley salmon with which 

 we once had the honour of a chance connection in the head inn of that 

 agreeable town. Its only blemish and what mortal creature is perfect ? 

 is its exuberant vivacity, which is but too apt to deteriorate its con- 

 dition by abridging its obesity. 



With Mr. Peacock's opinions on lobster-sauce we presume not to quar- 

 rel. De gustibus non est disputandum which, by the by, we should 

 have recollected before we presumed to question his salmonian sagacity. 

 Still even on this point there is ample room for controversy, into which, 

 however, we shall defer entering till we have made ourselves acquainted 

 with the Bishop of London's theory on the subject. Our present impulse 

 leads us to look on lobstersauce with more reverence than affection ; as 

 an object rather to be respectfully shunned than affectionately adhered 

 to. Sed hactenus hoec. 



We are much pleased with the humorous extravagance of our author's 

 description of a sallow, care-worn man of business, who is represented 

 as looking " as if he had tumbled headlong into a volcano, and been 

 thrown up again among the cinders." We cannot, however, accord 

 praise to his sneers at the immortal Waverley Novels. Here they are for 

 the reader's benefit, who, we suspect, will not be a little astonished : 



Lady Clarinda. History is but a tiresome thing in itself: it becomes more 

 agreeable the more romance is mixed up with it. The great enchanter has 

 made me learn many things which I should never have dreamed of studying-, 

 if they had not come to me in the form of amusement. 



The Rev. Dr. Folliott. What enchanter is that ? There are two enchanters : 

 he of the north, and he of the south. 



Mr. Trillo. Rossini? 



The Rev. Dr. Folliott. Ay, there is another enchanter. But I mean the great 

 enchanter of Covent Garden : he who, for more than a quarter of a century, 

 has produced two pantomimes a year, to the delight of children of all ages, 

 including myself at all ages. That is the enchanter for me, I am for the 

 pantomimes. All the northern enchanter's romances put together, would not 

 furnish materials for half the southern enchanter's pantomimes. 



Lady Clarinda. Surely you do not class literature with pantomime ? 



The Rev. Dr. Folliott. In these cases, I do. They are both one, with a slight 

 difference. The one is the literature of pantomime the other is the panto- 

 mime of literature. There is the same variety of character, the same diversity 

 of story, the same copiousness of incident, the same research into costume, the 

 same display of heraldry, falconry, minstrelsy, scenery, monkery, witchery, 

 devilry, robbery, poachery, piracy, fishery, gipsy-astrology, demoriology, 

 architecture, fortification, castrametation, navigation ; the same running base 

 of love and battle. The main difference is, that the one set of amusing fic- 

 tions is told in music and action ; the other in all the worst dialects of the 

 English language. As to any sentence worth remembering, any moral or 

 political truth, anything having a tendency, however remote, to make men 



