Our friend got a little involved at this point of his elaborate justification of himself. There was so much of special pleading in his article that the intelligent reader might not unfairly think that he knew he was toadying a little, and was fighting an attack by anticipation. In one portion of his article he was very bitter; he said that the London newspaper-men, who professed to look down from the greatest heights upon provincials, were provincials themselves. Then he claimed all the best men in town as countrymen, and vowed that all the most noteworthy magazine articles were written by provincials. How the editor drifted into this irrelevant discussion was curious to note; how he got back again to the subject in hand was a marvel of literary art. He finished by showing how the marriages of the great influenced the destinies of a nation, and he went back to the remotest times for illustrations of this important point. Even at the risk of involving the narrative, we pause to tell the reader that the provincial thunderer in question has since succeeded in obtaining an appointment in town, and that he has begun already to look down from his high tower upon his humbler brethren of the Severnshire press; indeed, he is said to be the writer of that amusing satirical tract on “Mrs. Grundy’s Borough,” which lampoons so smartly the society, public and private, of the old city. Well, “circumstances alter cases,” as the _Severntown Mercury_ wisely remarked in reviewing that offensive publication, which took the old city and the post-office by storm one morning not very long ago. The London provincial gentleman, if he be living now (and we hope he is living happily and prosperously), will we trust forgive our allusion to this incident; he may say that it is more irrelevant to this history than that passage in his article to the subject discussed. Perhaps he is right; we bow to his opinion with all deference. We can assure him that we should not have mentioned him at all, only that our story seemed to demand it. Honestly endeavouring to place these records of modern history fairly before the reader, we could not, without something like a breach of faith, have excluded the journalistic features of the union of the houses of Verner and Tallant, and particularly when we consider the consequences of that interesting and delightful marriage.