"According to your favourite reviewer, who accuses him of it, in terms. Now let us look at the fact. Here is the passage in the work itself. In the first place you will remark that this sentence, which contains the alleged contradiction, is mutilated; the part which is omitted, giving a directly contrary meaning to it, from that it bears under the reviewer's scissors." "It has some such appearance, I do confess." "Here you perceive that the closing sentence of the same paragraph, and which refers directly to the point at issue, is displaced, made to appear as belonging to a separate paragraph, and as conveying a different meaning from what the author has actually expressed." "Upon my word, I do not know but you are right!" "Well, Mr. Howel, we have had wit of no very pure water, ignorance as relates to facts, and mistakes as regards very positive assertions. In what category, as Captain Truck would say, do you place this?" "Why does not the author reviewed expose this?" "Why does not a gentleman wrangle with a detected pick-pocket?" "It is literary swindling," said John Effingham, "and the man who did it, is inherently a knave." "I think both these facts quite beyond dispute," observed Mrs. Bloomfield, laying down Mr. Howel's favourite review with an air of cool contempt; "and I must say I did not think it necessary to prove the general character of the work, at this late date, to any American of ordinary intelligence; much less to a sensible man, like Mr. Howel." "But, ma'am, there may be much truth and justice in the rest of its remarks," returned the pertinacious Mr. Howel, "although it has fallen into these mistakes." "Were you ever on a jury, Howel?" asked John Effingham, in his caustic manner. "Often; and on grand juries, too." "Well, did the judge never tell you, when a witness is detected in lying on one point, that his testimony is valueless on all others?" "Very true; but this is a review, and not testimony." "The distinction is certainly a very good one," resumed Mrs. Bloomfield, laughing, "as nothing, in general, can be less like honest testimony than a review!" "But I think, my dear ma'am, you will allow that all this is excessively biting and severe--I can't say I ever read any thing sharper in my life." "It strikes me, Mr. Howel, as being nothing but epithets, the cheapest and most contemptible of all species of abuse. Were two men, in your presence, to call each other such names, I think it would excite nothing but disgust in your mind. When the thought is clear and poignant, there is little need to have recourse to mere epithets; indeed, men never use the latter, except when there is a deficiency of the first." "Well, well, my friends," cried Mr. Howel, as he walked away towards Grace and Sir George, "this is a different thing from what I at first thought it, but still I think you undervalue the periodical."