Johnson did not understand him, and that Congreve, in his own day and afterwards, was considered to be, in some points, Shakspeare’s superior. “What do you think a man’s criticism is worth, sir,” cries Mr. Warrington, “who says those lines of Mr. Congreve, about a church— ‘How reverend is the face of yon tall pile, Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads, To bear aloft its vast and ponderous roof, By its own weight made steadfast and immovable; Looking tranquillity. It strikes an awe And terror on my aching sight’—et cætera what do you think of a critic who says those lines are finer than anything Shakspeare ever wrote?” A dim consciousness of danger for Clive, a terror that his son had got into the society of heretics and unbelievers, came over the Colonel,—and then presently, as was the wont with his modest soul, a gentle sense of humility. He was in the wrong, perhaps, and these younger men were right. Who was he, to set up his judgment against men of letters, educated at college? It was better that Clive should follow them than him, who had had but a brief schooling, and that neglected, and who had not the original genius of his son’s brilliant companions. We particularise these talks, and the little incidental mortifications which one of the best of men endured, not because the conversations are worth the remembering or recording, but because they presently very materially influenced his own and his son’s future history. In the midst of the artists and their talk the poor Colonel was equally in the dark. They assaulted this Academician and that; laughed at Mr. Haydon, or sneered at Mr. Eastlake, or the contrary; deified Mr. Turner on one side of the table, and on the other scorned him as a madman—nor could Newcome comprehend a word of their jargon. Some sense there must be in their conversation: Clive joined eagerly in it and took one side or another. But what was all this rapture about a snuffy brown picture called Titian, this delight in three flabby nymphs by Rubens, and so forth? As for the vaunted Antique, and the Elgin Marbles—it might be that that battered torso was a miracle, and that broken-nosed bust a perfect beauty. He tried and tried to see that they were. He went away privily and worked at the National Gallery with a catalogue: and passed hours in the Museum before the ancient statues, desperately praying to comprehend them, and puzzled before them as he remembered he was puzzled before the Greek rudiments as a child when he cried over ὁ, και ἡ ἀληθής, και τὸ ἀληθὲς. Whereas when Clive came to look at these same things his eyes would lighten up with pleasure, and his cheeks flush with enthusiasm. He seemed to drink in colour as he would a feast of wine. Before the statues he would wave his finger, following the line of grace, and burst into ejaculations of delight and admiration. “Why can’t I love the things which he loves?” thought Newcome; “why am I blind to the beauties which he admires so much—and am I unable to