_B_. Yes; everything is arranged for the nuptials--carriages are sent home, jewellery received but not paid for, dresses all tried on, the party invited--nay, assembled in the blue-and-white drawing-room. The right reverend my lord bishop is standing behind the temporary altar--he has wiped his spectacles and thumbed his prayer-book--all eyes are turned towards the door, which opens not--the bride faints, for the bridegroom cometh not--he's not "i' the vein"--a something, as like nothing as possible, has given him a disgust that is surmountable--he flings his happiness to the winds, though he never loved with more outrageous intensity than at the moment he discards his mistress; so he fights three duels with the two brothers and father. He wounds one of the young men dangerously, the other slightly; fires his pistol in the air when he meets her father--for how could he take the life of him who gave life to his adored one? Your hero can always hit a man just where he pleases--vide every novel in Mr C's collection. The hero becomes misanthropical, the heroine maniacal. The former marries an antiquated and toothless dowager, as an escape from the imaginary disgust he took at a sight of a matchless woman; and the latter marries an old brute, who threatens her life every night, and puts her in bodily fear every morning, as an indemnity in full for the loss of the man of her affections. They are both romantically miserable; and then comes on your tantalising scenes of delicate distress, and so the end of your third volume, and then finish without any end at all. _Verb. sap. sat_. Or, if you like it better, kill the old dowager of a surfeit, and make the old brute who marries the heroine commit suicide; and, after all these unheard-of trials, marry them as fresh and beautiful as ever. _A_. A thousand thanks. Your _verba_ are not thrown to a _sap_. Can I possibly do you any favour for all this kindness? _B_. Oh, my dear fellow! the very greatest. As I see yours will be, at all points, a most fashionable novel, do me the inestimable favour _not_ to ask me _to read it_. CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT. HOW TO WRITE A BOOK OF TRAVELS. MR ANSARD'S _Chambers_. _Ansard_. (alone.) Well, I thought it hard enough to write a novel at the dictate of the bibliopolist; but to be condemned to sit down and write my travels--travels that have never extended farther than the Lincoln's Inn Coffee House for my daily food, and a walk to Hampstead on a Sunday. These travels to be swelled into Travels up the Rhine in the year 18--. Why, it's impossible. O that Barnstaple were here, for he has proved my guardian angel! Lazy, clever dog! _Enter_ BARNSTAPLE. _Barnstaple_. Pray, my dear Ansard, to whom did you apply that last epithet? _Ansard_. My dear Barnstaple, I never was more happy to see you. Sit down, I have much to tell you, all about myself and my difficulties. _Barnstaple_. The conversation promises to be interesting to me, at all events.