"We make but little way," said Mr. Haveloc. "That does not matter. It is pleasant to lie at anchor. Suppose we were becalmed in the midst of the Pacific?" said Aveline. "With one day's luncheon on board," said Mr. Haveloc. "It is very pleasant to have run into some great danger, after it is all over," said Aveline. "That makes the pleasure of horrid dreams," said Mr. Haveloc. "But they are not distinct--real enough," said Aveline. "Every thing seems to happen through a ground-glass." "One would think you took opium Miss Fitzpatrick," said Mr. Haveloc laughing. "So she does, regularly," said Mrs. Fitzpatrick, with an anxious look, and fixing her eyes upon his face. He looked surprised and pained, opened the book hastily, and began to read. Aveline was enchanted with 'the Faithful Shepherdess.' Half rising on her cushions, with cheeks flushed, and her large transparent eyes wide open, she feared to lose a single word. "That is surely the brightest pastoral ever written," said she, as he laid down the book at the close of the first act. "Do you like it better than 'Comus?'" he asked. "I do not like to compare them," said Aveline. "But there seems so much less effort in Beaumont and Fletcher's verse. And what stately simplicity in the opening,--what richness in the lyrical movements! They seem to have been inspired by the tawney sunshine of the Greek isles; while all the woodland scenery seems glittering with the fresh dew of an English summer's night." "And then Milton's 'Comus' labours under the slight disadvantage of not being written first," said Mr. Haveloc. "Ah! you mean to insinuate that he borrowed some of the ideas," said Aveline laughing. "Oh! he never borrowed; his was highway robbery, piracy, Miss Fitzpatrick." "You do not like Milton, I see," said Aveline. "No. All his feelings were violently personal. His Theory of Divorce was suggested by his sour discontent of his wife. His democracy by the party he espoused. His religion was the harsh bigotry of his faction, not that which improves the individual. And the much admired anecdote of knocking up his daughters in the night, to write his verses, appears to me the coolest instance of selfish vanity I can now recollect. Fancy, Miss Fitzpatrick, your being rudely aroused from some delicious dream to pen down the leaden stanzas of 'Paradise Regained.'" "Mamma thinks you are talking treason," said Aveline. "All the good that I know of him is, that when he had got hold of a wrong principle, he was consistent in holding it," continued Mr. Haveloc. "You know he persisted in rejecting the office that Charles the Second was so generous as to offer him." "It was generous," said Aveline, "for Milton's poetry had not then received the stamp of time, and Charles was not compelled, by opinion, to be liberal to the author of 'Paradise Lost.'"