No selection of personages, however, even of the most detailed and particular description, can convey any real impression of the mingled irony and insight, the wit and satire, the genial but perfectly remorseless revelation of human springs of action, which distinguish scene after scene of the book. Nothing, for example, can be more admirable than the different manifestations of meanness which take place among the travellers of the stage-coach, in the oft-quoted chapter where Joseph, having been robbed of everything, lies naked and bleeding in the ditch. There is Miss Grave-airs, who protests against the indecency of his entering the vehicle, but like a certain lady in the _Rake's Progress_, holds the sticks of her fan before her face while he does so, and who is afterwards found to be carrying Nantes under the guise of Hungary-water; there is the lawyer who advises that the wounded man shall be taken in, not from any humane motive, but because he is afraid of being involved in legal proceedings if they leave him to his fate; there is the wit who seizes the occasion for a burst of facetious double-meanings, chiefly designed for the discomfiture of the prude; and, lastly, there is the coachman, whose only concern is the shilling for his fare, and who refuses to lend either of the useless greatcoats he is sitting upon, lest "they should be made bloody," leaving the shivering suppliant to be clothed by the generosity of the postilion ("a Lad," says Fielding with a fine touch of satire, "who hath been since transported for robbing a Hen-roost"). This worthy fellow accordingly strips off his only outer garment, "at the same time swearing a great Oath," for which he is duly rebuked by the passengers, "that he would rather ride in his Shirt all his Life, than suffer a Fellow-Creature to lie in so miserable a Condition." Then there are the admirable scenes which succeed Joseph's admission into the inn; the discussion between the bookseller and the two parsons as to the publication of Adams's sermons, which the "Clergy would be certain to cry down," because they inculcate good works against faith; the debate before the justice as to the manuscript of AEschylus, which is mistaken for one of the Fathers; and the pleasant discourse between the poet and the player which, beginning by compliments, bids fair to end in blows. Nor are the stories of Leonora and Mr. Wilson without their interest. They interrupt the straggling narrative far less than the Man of the Hill interrupts _Tom Jones_, and they afford an opportunity for varying the epic of the highway by pictures of polite society which could not otherwise be introduced. There can be little doubt, too, that some of Mr. Wilson's town experiences were the reflection of the author's own career; while the characteristics of Leonora's lover Horatio,--who was "a young Gentleman of a good Family, bred to the Law," and recently called to the Bar, whose "Face and Person were such as the Generality allowed