_B_. No; but your readers can't disprove it.--"`Coridon,' said he, surveying his attendant from head to foot, and ultimately assuming a severity of countenance, `Coridon, you are becoming gross, if not positively what the people call _fat_.' The Swiss attendant fell back in graceful astonishment three steps, and arching his eyebrows, extending his inverted palms forward, and raising his shoulders above the apex of his head, exclaimed, `_Pardon, milor, j'en aurais un horreur parfait_.' `I tell you,' replied our gracefully recumbent hero, `that it is so, Coridon; and I ascribe it to your partiality for that detestable wine called Port. Confine yourself to Hock and Moselle, sirrah: I fear me, you have a base hankering after mutton and beef. Restrict yourself to salads, and do not sin even with an omelette more than once a week. Coridon must be visionary and diaphanous, or he is no Coridon for me. Remove my night-gloves, and assist me to rise: it is past four o'clock, and the sun must have, by this time, sufficiently aired this terrestrial globe.'" _A_. I have it now; I feel I could go on for an hour. _B_. Longer than that, before you get him out of his dressing-room. You must make at least five chapters before he is apparelled, or how can you write a fashionable novel, in which you cannot afford more than two incidents in the three volumes? Two are absolutely necessary for the editor of the Gazette to extract as specimens, before he winds up an eulogy. Do you think that you can proceed now for a week, without my assistance? _A_. I think so, if you will first give me some general ideas. In the first place, am I always to continue in this style? _B_. No; I thought you knew better. You must throw in patches of philosophy every now and then. _A_. Philosophy in a fashionable novel? _B_. Most assuredly, or it would be complained of as trifling; but a piece, now and then, of philosophy, as unintelligible as possible, stamps it with deep thought. In the dressing-room, or boudoir, it must be occasionally Epicurean; elsewhere, especially in the open air, more Stoical. _A_. I'm afraid that I shall not manage that without a specimen to copy from. Now I think of it, Eugene Aram says something very beautiful on a starry night.