“Jerningham was always a Jesuit,” said one; “he is the Talleyrand of social life. And if you want to arrive at what he means, you must take the reverse of what he says.” “If they are both such delightful creatures, what a pity it is they couldn’t live peaceably together!” said another. CHAPTER V. THE EDITOR OF THE “AREOPAGUS.” AMONGST the contributors to the literary periodical of which Mr. Desmond was the editor, Daniel Mayfield occupied no insignificant position. The most genial and good-natured of men was at the same time the most ferocious and acrimonious of critics. When an innocent lamb was to be led to the slaughter, it was Daniel who assumed the butcher’s apron and armed himself with the deadly knife. When a wretched scribbler was, in vulgar phraseology, to be “jumped upon,” honest Daniel put on his hobnailed boots, and went at the savage operation with a will. The days were past in which the Edinburgh reviewer apologized with a gentle courtesy before he ventured to express his dissent from the opinions of a lady historian. Criticism of to-day must be racy, at any price. Daniel’s strong arm smote right and left, cleaving friend and foe indiscriminately asunder; and if it was on a woman’s head that the blow descended, so much the better. The woman should have been at home studying her cookery-book, or working that domestic treadmill, the sewing-machine, instead of jostling her betters in the literary arena. “Hark forward, tantivy!” cried Daniel the critic; “run her down, trample her in the mud, make an end of her! She would quote Greek, would she? Why, the creature can barely spell plain English! She would prate of gods and goddesses, whose name she picks haphazard from a cheap abridgment of Lemprière. She would discourse of fashion and splendour, forsooth, who was “born in a garret, in a kitchen bred.” Daniel the man was tender and courteous in his treatment of all womankind; but Daniel the racy essayist knew no mercy. Daniel the pitiless was one of Mr. Desmond’s most valued coadjutors, and had received many offers of kindly service from that gentleman; but the literary Bohemian had refused all.