The lady was upwards of forty [true enough! she was also upwards of fifty, good master historian,] and therefore urged the disagreement of their years, as well as their circumstances; but, after _allowing her four-and-twenty hours for a final reply_, his eloquence surmounted all her objections, and she consented to a union wherein gratitude was to supply the deficiencies of passion!' Criticism would only spoil the pretty picture--so let it stand." Criticism had already spoilt the picture, such as it is. But this matters not to Mr Dixon. The quotation he has thought fit to embellish his pages with, is taken from an anonymous pamphlet published in 1790, under the title of _The Life of the late John Howard, Esquire, with a Review of his Travels_. Mr Dixon, however, evidently extracts it second-hand from the note in Mr Brown, where it is quoted, with some other passages from the same performance, for the express purpose of refutation and contradiction. This is what Mr Dixon would call _artistic_--the picking up what had been discarded as worthless, and, with a gentle shade of doubt thrown over its authenticity, making use of it again. A note of Mr Brown's, in the same page of his memoirs, (p. 634,) will supply us with another instance of this ingenious procedure. That note runs thus:-- "We are informed in the memoirs of Mr Howard, published in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, that, during the period of his residing as a lodger in the house of Mrs Loidore, he used to ride out in the morning for a few miles with a book in his pocket, dismount, turn his horse to graze upon a common, and spend several hours in reading. 'On a very particular inquiry, however,' says the author of the _Life of Mr Howard_, inserted in the _Universal Magazine_, 'of persons very intimate, and who had often rode out with him, we are assured that they never saw, nor ever _heard_ of such a practice.'" Mr Dixon makes use of the first part of the note, ignoring the second. "It is said," he writes, gravely suspending his judgment on the authenticity of the fact--"it is said, in a contemporary biographical notice, that he would frequently ride out a mile or two in the country, fasten his nag to a tree, or turn him loose to browse upon the way-side; and then, throwing himself upon the grass, under a friendly shade, would read and cogitate for hours. This statement, if true, would indicate more of a romantic and poetical temperament in Howard, than the generally calm and Christian stoicism of his manner would have led one to expect."