518 The March of Mind : [Nov. 



of the Spimkins' family, a family rich, respectable, and orderly, until 

 the March of Mind, which our modern philosophers are striving so hard 

 to expedite, reduced them from wealth to poverty ; and, from having 

 been the pride, compelled them to become the pity of Crutched-Friars. 



Every one must remember the strange, bewildering enthusiasm 

 excited by Sir Walter Scott's first appearance as a novelist. All the 

 world was Scott-struck. His songs were set to music ; fair hands painted 

 fire-screens from his incidents ; play-wrights dramatized his heroes ; and 

 even the great Mr. Alderman Dobbs himself was so enraptured with his 

 descriptions of Highland scenery, that he actually took an inside place in 

 the Inverness mail, in order, as he shrewdly remarked, " to judge for 

 himself with his own eyes" — a feat which he would infallibly have 

 accomplished, but for two reasons ; first, tliat the coach passed the most 

 picturesque part of the Highlands in the night-time ; secondly, that the 

 worthy alderman himself fell fast asleep during the best part of his jour- 

 ney. He returned home, however, as might have been expected, in 

 ecstasies. 



Among the number of those who caught this poetic influenza in 

 its most alai-ming form, were the two Misses Spinks, daughters of Mr. 

 Common-Council Spinks, once a mighty man on 'Change, but who had 

 lately retired from business to enjoy life, alternately at his town house in 

 Crutched-Friars, and his charming summer villa at Newington Butts, 

 near the Montpellier Tea Gardens. As these young ladies lived next 

 door to Mr. Spimkins, and cultivated the gentilities of society — a little 

 neutralized, perhaps, by the circumstance of their indulging in certain 

 pleonastic peculiarities of aspiration, by virtue of which the substantive 

 ^' air" would be accommodated with an h, and the adverb " very" be 

 transformed into a wherry — it may reasonably be inferred that they were 

 much looked up to by their neighboiLrs. The Misses Spimkins, in par- 

 ticular, took pattern by them in all things. They were the standards by 

 which, in secret, they regulated their demeanor — the mirror in which 

 tliey longed to see themselves at full-length reflected. 



Things were in this state, when one morning ]\Iiss Spinks, a young lady 

 of a grave and intellectual cast of mind, with a face broad at the forehead 

 and peaked at the chin, like a kite, called at the Spimkinses for the pur- 

 pose of inquiring the character of a servant maid. The Spimkinses were 

 delighted by such condescension. Miss Spinks was such a charming 

 young woman ! such a dear creature ! — so well-bred, so well-dressed, 

 and, above all, so well-informed ! Such, for at least a month afterwards, 

 was the hourly topic of conversation at the grocer's table : it came up 

 with the breakfast-tray, it helped to digest the dinner, it served as a 

 night-cap after supper, until at length old Spimkins, in consideration of 

 his neighbour's importance, was prevailed on to depart so far from his 

 homely notions of household economy, as to allow his wife and children 

 to return IMiss Spinks' visit. In due time both parties, as a matter of 

 course, became intimate ; but as literature was all the rage at the Com- 

 mon Councilman's, the Misses Spimkins were for a time at fault, until 

 a seasonable supply of novels, procured secretly from a fashionable pub- 

 lisher in the JMinories, enabled them to converse pn a more equal 

 footing. 



It was just about this period that the Third Series of the Tales of My 

 Landlord appeared. The Spinkses, who had heard from Alderman Dobbs 

 tliat the descriptions were " uncommon like natur," of course read it ; 



