"Cruel mothers, chattering friends, and flattering rivals all were distanced--the game was run down, he was in at the death, and the brush was his own. False delicacy at Gretna is exploded; a woman when she goes into Lanchester's is known to want millinery (people say something more), when she lounges at Gray's she is understood to stand in need of trinkets, when she stops at Gattie's she wants complexion, and when she goes to Gretna she wants a husband. "That being the case, _not_ to talk of marriage is as absurdly _outré_ as not to call for supper, and therefore Musgrave with a sly look at his blushing bride, ordered a couple of roasted fowls and a parson to be ready immediately; the waiter, perfect in his part, stepped over to the chandler's shop, hired the divine, and at half-past ten the hymeneal rites were to be solemnized."--Vol. i., p. 84. The fowls are put to the fire--the blacksmith appears--the ceremony has just reached the essential point, when a chaise dashes up to the door--out spring the heroine's mother and the rival again. Farther on, the hero comes late at night to an inn, and is put into a double-bedded room, in which the rival happens to be deposited, fast asleep. The rival gets up in the morning before the hero awakes, cuts his thumb in shaving, walks out, sees a creditor, jumps on the top of a passing stage-coach, and vanishes. The hero is supposed to have murdered him--the towel is bloody--he must have contrived to bury the body; he is tried, convicted, condemned;--he escapes--an accident brings a constable to the cottage where he is sheltered--he is recaptured--pinioned--mounts the drop; he is in the act of speaking his last speech, when up dashes another post-chaise containing the rival, who had happened to see the trial just the morning before in an old newspaper. And so on through three volumes. It abounds, as a matter of course, in play upon words: for example, a rejected suitor's taking to drinking, is accounted for on the plea that "it is natural an unsuccessful lover should be given to whine,"--a pun, by the way, better conveyed in the name "Negus," which he is said to have bestowed upon a favourite, but offending, dog. There are also introduced a couple of tolerably well-sketched portraits, _Mr. Minns_, the poet (T. Moore), and _Sir Joseph Jonquil_ (Banks). An epigram, referring to the celebrated duel of the former with Jeffrey, in consequence of an article in No. 16 of the _Edinburgh Review_, is worth repeating,--the more so, as its paternity has been subject of dispute, the majority attributing it to one of the authors of "Rejected Addresses!"--