"My younger friend, Lavinia, is just as miserably yoked as her sister, though Mr. Dormer does not resemble Mr. Mills. The latter hates society as much as the former courts it; and _his_ weakness is that of authorship. He writes for every newspaper, magazine, and review, that will give a place to his lucubrations. He worries all the members of parliament with prosing dissertations on political economy, finance, agriculture, and commerce; he wastes his property in trying experiments which never come to good. The restless activity of Mr. Dormer never slumbers, and is exhibited in endless schemes, the utter failure of which has no influence in deterring him from new attempts. He set up a school at considerable expense, hired a master and mistress at a large salary, to teach in a method of his own device, and found at the end of three years, that the children had not learned to spell. His sheep were all shorn in the winter to prove the excellence of a theory on the fineness of wool; but, as might naturally be expected, the poor animals all died. He plants trees at mid-summer to demonstrate that those people are mistaken who prefer spring and autumn for the purpose, but as you may easily anticipate, never beholds a leaf on any of his ill-fated groves, which, after a few months of "hope deferred," are consigned to the oven. He drowned a favourite dog the other day in trying a life-boat of his own construction; and broke his arm last year by a fall from a balloon which he had inflated with some new gas, and Icarus-like, would essay himself with _such_ success as attended the first flight of the Dædalian wings. Though he lives at home, all the endearing relations of life are despised and neglected. He hates the sight of two lovely children, because they interrupt him; and though I passed four months with Lavinia, I never saw her husband come but twice to the room where she and I sat in the mornings: oh the first occasion, to ask for one of her harp strings, with which to make experiment on a new theory of vibration; and upon the second, to beg a bit of gum from his wife's drawing-box, with which, to secure one of his retorts. Always in a hurry, he makes a perpetual _breeze_ through the house, by the rapidity of his motions; and, as his hands are generally imbrued in chemical compounds, not of Arabian odour, I cannot say that the gale thus stirred, wafts perfume on its wing. Nothing can rouse his attention to his own affairs, which would fall into utter confusion were it not for the good sense of his wife. He dislikes the neighbouring gentry, because he does not consider them people of _talent_; and expends his money without any reference either to ornament or real utility, but simply with the vain-glorious hope of advancing his individual fame as a man of genius.