Kenelm was, and looked, puzzled. But after a pause he answered: “The more remote it be from the present day, the better for me. You said your collection was rich in mediaeval literature. But the Middle Ages are so copied by the modern Goths, that I might as well read translations of Chaucer or take lodgings in Wardour Street. If you have any books about the manners and habits of those who, according to the newest idea in science, were our semi-human progenitors in the transition state between a marine animal and a gorilla, I should be very much edified by the loan.” “Alas,” said Mr. Emlyn, laughing, “no such books have been left to us.” “No such books? You must be mistaken. There must be plenty of them somewhere. I grant all the wonderful powers of invention bestowed on the creators of poetic romance; still not the sovereign masters in that realm of literature--not Scott, not Cervantes, not Goethe, not even Shakspeare--could have presumed to rebuild the past without such materials as they found in the books that record it. And though I, no less cheerfully, grant that we have now living among us a creator of poetic romance immeasurably more inventive than they,--appealing to our credulity in portents the most monstrous, with a charm of style the most conversationally familiar,--still I cannot conceive that even that unrivalled romance-writer can so bewitch our understandings as to make us believe that, if Miss Mordaunt’s cat dislikes to wet her feet, it is probably because in the prehistoric age her ancestors lived in the dry country of Egypt; or that when some lofty orator, a Pitt or a Gladstone, rebuts with a polished smile which reveals his canine teeth the rude assault of an opponent, he betrays his descent from a ‘semi-human progenitor’ who was accustomed to snap at his enemy. Surely, surely there must be some books still extant written by philosophers before the birth of Adam, in which there is authority, even though but in mythic fable, for such poetic inventions. Surely, surely some early chroniclers must depose that they saw, saw with their own eyes, the great gorillas who scratched off their hairy coverings to please the eyes of the young ladies of their species, and that they noted the gradual metamorphosis of one animal into another. For, if you tell me that this illustrious romance-writer is but a cautious man of science, and that we must accept his inventions according to the sober laws of evidence and fact, there is not the most incredible ghost story which does not better satisfy the common sense of a sceptic. However, if you have no such books, lend me the most unphilosophical you possess,--on magic, for instance,--the philosopher’s stone”-- “I have some of them,” said the vicar, laughing; “you shall choose for yourself.” “If you are going homeward, let me accompany you part of the way: I don’t yet know where the church and the vicarage are, and I ought to know before I come in the evening.”