No, I know you don't. Vy, I do--because they ha' got more zense." This was said with a kind of contempt which was quite a floorer to the new wiseacre. GRATIAN.--Thanks for the story! now that is just the sense that I have acquired at some cost, and no cure; but I didn't get at it naturally as your old friend did. So now for sleep, and good-night. The Curate and I did not part so soon. Time flew, and we seemed to shorten the night--"noctem vario sermone," as sayeth Virgil of poor Dido, who must have found the conversation considerably flag with the stupid AEneas. "Noctem vario sermone _trahebat_--it was a sad _drag_. It must have become very tiresome, a little while before that, when ill-mannered Bitias drank up all the wine, and buried his face in the cup, "pleno se proluit auro." And they had been obliged to resort to singing, always the refuge from the visible awkwardness of _nothing to say_. And here I cannot but remark, Eusebius, what dull things their songs must have been on natural philosophy, sun, moon, and stars--songs, Virgil tells you, edited by the old Astronomer-general Atlas. But as this was before the foundation of Rome, they had not that variety for their selection, which was as much in fashion afterwards in Rome as Moore's Melodies in England, as we learn from Mr Macaulay, and his version and edition of the "Lays." They had no piccolo pianofortes in those days, or they would have had something lighter than the Lays, as the better after-supper Poet calls it--a "Something more exquisite still."