By-and-by your next number appeared! I was happier than you can conceive! Every sarcasm I had uttered was answered by one twice as furious; if Peregrine was angry, Benjamin was mad. I hugged the dear invectives with delight: as you waxed more wrathful I waxed more pleased; and at last, when, as the climax of my happiness, I found that you had been carping at the “Lines to----,” those lines which would have done honour to any living poet; those lines which, had they appeared in your columns, would have made the _Salt-Bearer_ worthy of immortality--then I flung down the book in transport, and exclaimed, “Our enemies are the best friends we have!” From that time to the present the _Etonian_ has never renewed the contest. The answers, however, which you have published to the strictures of a correspondent upon Wordsworth and Coleridge have shown that the _Salt-Bearer_ was somewhat reluctant to lay down the cudgels. There was also an occasional sly hit at Peregrine--especially one on the score of plagiarism, which the author did not think fit to support by any examples. You remember the lines “To a Young Lady on her Fourteenth Birthday,” inserted in your fourth number? You have accused me of plagiarism, but I did not retaliate. Neither was I severe upon your literary connection with a certain Mr. H., because I believe that connection was at least commenced when you were ignorant of the man’s notorious character. And now, after the furious reply in your fifth number, and the occasional hits in its successors, you come forward and say, “There is no reason that I should retaliate a single word.” The palpable absurdity of this generosity must be so evident both to yourself and your readers that I need say no more upon the subject. At all events our warfare is now over. I know not what your feelings may be towards me, but I assure you that in mine not a particle of hostility exists: if I may use the expression, I have shaken hands with you, not _re verâ_, but by a poetical license. I feel no reluctance in allowing that the prose composition of your latter numbers has exhibited many signs of improvement; and that if the support you have received has been no greater than I believe it to have been, the editor of the _Salt-Bearer_ has gone through his work respectably. You and I, Mr. Bookworm, have made much noise in our day, and have excited, among our fellow-Etonians, a greater sensation than two such insignificant beings ever excited before. There has been much talk about us, which has now, I believe, ceased; and there has been much hot blood between us, which has now, I trust, grown cool. For my part, I can look back to our early disputes as if they were the events of a former age; and detect our respective blunders and mistakes as calmly as if I were making the same examination into the conduct of our great-grandfathers.