Assure yourself, my good sir, replied Wilson, that the attention I have bestowed on your narrative has been amply repaid by the entertainment I have received from it. You have given me a history of my native country, which in many parts was perfectly new to me, and if it had had no concern whatever with your genealogy, still it would have been interesting to me, who have never thought, nor had the curiosity to enquire, about the annals of a time so very distant. That you have authorities for what you have narrated I cannot doubt, for I am sure you are incapable of a voluntary fiction, which, if any such there is, must rest with others, not with you. As for the gratification you may derive from the persuasion, that you can trace your descent from the son of Noah, and by consequence, through Noah, even from Adam himself, grace forbid I should attempt to lessen it, persuaded as I am, that you have too much consideration for Moses to enlist with the Pre-Adamites. At the same time I am free to own, that my respect for you, being founded on the virtues of your character, receives little addition from the circumstances of your pedigree; let me not however be considered as an abettor of plebean sentiments; I acknowledge a degree of prejudice for a well-born gentleman, and so long as you display the wings of King Bladud only on the shoulders of King Bardus’s harp, I look with respect upon your ancient banners; and henceforward when blind David Williams shall make your castle hall resound with his melodious harp, I shall recollect with pleasure that you have not only a natural delight, but also an hereditary interest, in that noble instrument. I am myself a lover of music; but it is a love without knowledge, for I neither know the practice, nor ever studied the theory of it. I like this tune, and I can’t tell why; I don’t like that, and can assign no reason for it. If music only creates surprise in me by the wonderful execution of a performer, I scarcely wish to hear it above once; if it moves my passions, and elicits (as it sometimes will) my tears, I could listen to it, as I may say, for ever; no repetition can exhaust the charm. What this is I cannot define, and for that very reason I suppose it to be nature; for art admits of explanation, but there is no logic, that applies to instinct. This was an unlucky remark, and the colonel stepped a little out of his natural character when he risqued it: had he kept clear of definitions, and said nothing about instinct, he might have escaped a lecture on the Harmonics, which now became unavoidable, and he heard himself addressed as follows--