1 Congreve, le meilleur auteur comique d'Angleterre: ses pièces les plus estimées sont Le Fourbe, Le Vieux Garçon, Amour pour Amour, L Epouse du Matin, Le Chemin du Monde.-- Manuel Bibliographique. Par G. Peignot. Paris, 1800. It was a singular combination of circumstances that induced and enabled me to form such an establishment; but I would not give it up, nor alter it, nor diminish it, nor increase it, for any earthly consideration. _The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ You hinted that, besides Milton's verses, you had another association of ideas with living in the top of a tower. _Mr. Falconer._ I have read of somebody who lived so, and admitted to his _sanctum_ only one young person, a niece or a daughter, I forget which, but on very rare occasions would descend to speak to some visitor who had previously propitiated the young lady to obtain him an interview. At last the young lady introduced one who proposed for her, and gained the consent of the recluse (I am not sure of his name, but I always call him Lord Noirmont) to carry her off. I think this was associated with some affliction that was cured, or some mystery that was solved, and that the hermit returned into the everyday world. I do not know where I read it, but I have always liked the idea of living like Lord Noirmont, when I shall have become a sufficiently disappointed man. _The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ You look as little like a disappointed man as any I have seen; but as you have neither daughter nor niece, you would have seven links instead of one between the top of your tower and the external world. _Mr. Falconer._ We are all born to disappointment. It is as well to be prospective. Our happiness is not in what is, but in what is to be. We may be disappointed in our everyday realities, and if not, we may make an ideality of the unattainable, and quarrel with Nature for not giving what she has not to give. It is unreasonable to be so disappointed, but it is disappointment not the less. _The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ It is something like the disappointment of the men of Gotham, when they could not fish up the moon from the sea. _Mr. Falconer._ It is very like it, and there are more of us in the predicament of the men of Gotham than are ready to acknowledge the similitude. _The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I am afraid I am too matter-of-fact to sympathise very clearly with this form of aestheticism; but here is a charming bit of forest scenery. Look at that old oak with the deer under it; the long and deep range of fern running up from it to that beech-grove on the upland, the lights and shadows on the projections and recesses of the wood, and the blaze of foxglove in its foreground. It is a place in which a poet might look for a glimpse of a Hamadryad.