_Mr. Crotchet_, _jun._—I hope, Mr. Firedamp, you will let your friendship carry you a little closer into the jaws of the lion. I am fitting up a flotilla of pleasure-boats, with spacious cabins, and a good cellar, to carry a choice philosophical party up the Thames and Severn, into the Ellesmere canal, where we shall be among the mountains of North Wales; which we may climb or not, as we think proper; but we will, at any rate, keep our floating hotel well provisioned, and we will try to settle all the questions over which a shadow of doubt yet hangs in the world of philosophy. _Mr. Firedamp_.—Out of my great friendship for you, I will certainly go; but I do not expect to survive the experiment. _The Rev. Dr. Folliott_.—_Alter erit tum Tiphys_, _et altera quæ vehat Argo Delectos Heroas_. I will be of the party, though I must hire an officiating curate, and deprive poor dear Mrs. Folliott, for several weeks, of the pleasure of combing my wig. _Lord Bossnowl_.—I hope, if I am to be of the party, our ship is not to be the ship of fools: He! he! _The Rev. Dr. Folliott_.—If you are one of the party, sir, it most assuredly will not: Ha! ha! _Lord Bossnowl_.—Pray sir, what do you mean by Ha! ha!? _The Rev. Dr. Folliott_.—Precisely, sir, what you mean by He! he! _Mr. Mac Quedy_.—You need not dispute about terms; they are two modes of expressing merriment, with or without reason; reason being in no way essential to mirth. No man should ask another why he laughs, or at what, seeing that he does not always know, and that, if he does, he is not a responsible agent. Laughter is an involuntary action of certain muscles, developed in the human species by the progress of civilisation. The savage never laughs. _The Rev. Dr. Folliott_.—No, sir, he has nothing to laugh at. Give him Modern Athens, the “learned friend,” and the Steam Intellect Society. They will develop his muscles. CHAPTER III. THE ROMAN CAMP. He loved her more then seven yere, Yet was he of her love never the nere; He was not ryche of golde and fe, A gentyll man forsoth was he. _The Squyr of Lowe Degre_. THE Reverend Doctor Folliott having promised to return to dinner, walked back to his vicarage, meditating whether he should pass the morning in writing his next sermon, or in angling for trout, and had nearly decided in favour of the latter proposition, repeating to himself, with great unction, the lines of Chaucer: And as for me, though that I can but lite, On bokis for to read I me delite, And to ’hem yeve I faithe and full credence, And in mine herte have ’hem in reverence, So hertily, that there is gamé none, That fro my bokis makith me to gone, But it be seldome, on the holie daie; Save certainly whan that the month of Maie Is cousin, and I here the foulis sing, And that the flouris ginnin for to spring, Farwell my boke and my devocion: