"Bursting with impatience! The scene is affecting, certainly-- touching--complete, with the exception of the black eyes. What would not Miss Burney make of it in one of her admirable novels! But you might have made use of a better word than bursting--I am ready to dissolve with emotion at this tender scene--the discovery of his parentage to a tall, ingenuous youth--bursting--you might have used, first, burning--secondly, glowing--thirdly, consuming--fourthly, raging--fifthly, dying--sixthly, there is perishing; but I will not much insist upon the last, though it is certainly better than bursting. You mean to say that you are burning, not bursting, with impatience--it is a natural feeling, it is commendable, it is worthy of a son of your most honourable father--I will faithfully report to him this filial impatience, and how eager I was to remove it. I do not say satisfy it-- a person less careful of the varieties of language would have said satisfy--an impatience satisfied is what? a contradiction of terms; but an impatience removed is--is--the removal of an impatience. This interview will grow very touching. Those blackened eyes--I would that there were a green shade over them. Are you prepared to be verified?" I bowed, fearing that any other expression of my wishes would lead to further digression. His lordship then, putting on his spectacles, and reading from a paper, commenced thus, I, all the while, trembling with agitation: "Are you the person who was nursed by one Rose Brandon, the wife of Joseph Brandon, by trade a sawyer?" "I am." "What name did you go by when under the care of those persons?" "Ralph Rattlin Brandon." "Right, very good. I shall embrace him shortly--my heart yearns towards him. Were you removed to a school, by a gentleman in a plain carriage, from those Brandons?" "I was." "To where?" "To Mr Roots' academy." "Right--a good boy, an amiable boy, he was removed to Mr Roots': and, having there imbibed the rudiments of a classical education, you were removed to where?" "To a boarding-school kept by a French gentleman at Stickenham, where, in his wife, I thought I had found a mother--" "Stop, we are not come to that yet, that is too affecting--of that anon, as somebody says in some play. Have you, Captain Reud, a glass of water ready, should this amiable youth or myself feel faint during this exciting investigation?" "Perfectly ready," said the Creole, decidedly in one of his insane fits; for he immediately skipped behind his lordship, and, jumping upon the locker, stood ready to invert a glass of water upon his nicely-powdered head, containing at least three gallons, this glass being a large globe, containing several curious fish, which swung, attached to a beam, directly over my interrogator.