“I will. Fairest of Nature’s works! perfection in duodecimo! I speak to you, and you do not hear; I question you, and you do not answer: but I read your taste in your dress, and your character in your countenance. You are the brightest of all earthly beauties. You would call me a blockhead if I called you a goddess; you are fashioned for a drawing-room, and not for Olympus--for champagne, and not for nectar; you are born for conquest and for mirth, to busy your delicate brain with the slaves of to-day, and to snap your delicate fingers at the slaves of yesterday; epigrams only are indited to your charms, witticisms only are uttered in your presence; you think laughter the elixir vitæ, and a folio of theology poison; you look with contempt on the Damon who has died for your sake, and with kindness on the fool who bows to the ground and vows he is ‘yours entire,’ head and hand, pen and pistol, from infancy to age, and from shining ringlet to shoe-ribbon!” “Admirable!” cried Cecil, “and after all the woman is nothing extraordinary.” “_Chacun a son goût_,” said Villars. “She has no poetry about her,” said the first. “I never write poetry about anybody,” said the second. “She is not guilty of intellect,” said the reviler. “She is guilty of coquetry,” said the admirer. “She would never understand Milton,” said the poet. “She would dance divinely,” said the fashionable. “You are over head and ears in love,” said Davenant, laughing immensely. “She died anno Domini seventeen hundred!” said Marmaduke, with inestimable gravity; and so we left the gallery. We parted from our friend the next morning. If perfect indifference and composure in all trials and temptations can constitute happiness, Villars will be a happy man; but there is something repulsive in his very happiness. Which shall I prefer? Marmaduke, with his unsunned and unclouded weather, or Davenant, with his eternal alternation of bright glow and fleeting shower? I could never settle the point. LEONORA. Poor Alonzo! He was the best friend that ever drank Xeres: he picked me out of the Guadalquivir, when I deemed I had said my last prayer. It was a very conciliating introduction. I never in my life made a friend of a man to whom I was introduced in a formal kind of way, with bows from both parties, and cordiality from neither. I love something more stirring, more animated; the river of life is at best but a quiet stupid stream, and I want an occasional pebble to ruffle its surface withal. The most agreeable introductions that ever fell to my lot were these--my introduction to Pendragon, who was overturned with me in the York Mail; my introduction to Eliza, who contrived to faint in my arms on board the _Albion_ packet; and my introduction to Alonzo, who picked me out of the Guadalquivir.