The first cup sufficed to set Apple on his _legs_, (speaking intellectually,) which he evinced by commencing a _running_ fire of puns and jests, too rapid for transcription; while Tristo, more slowly, but not less surely, owned the mild, exhilarating influence. In the mean time conversation lagged, and finally ceased, while they gave themselves up to the more _sensible_ pleasures of the palate. After a while, Pulito, who appeared to have been collecting all his energies for the onset, seized a moment, when Apple was poring over his Autobiography, Tristo with a pleased smile was dipping into Little’s poems, and Quod, as _magister morum_ for the evening, was resettling the coffee pot on its uneasy bed, and broke forth in a most oratorical tone with the following introduction to the debate. _Pulito._ “On whatever principle you may compare the writings of the older novelists with the works of Bulwer and his school, whether as to their effect, in instructing the mind, or improving the heart, quickening the moral sense, or conveying useful information, or even for mere interest, or whiling away the time in rational amusement, (which last is but the lowest commendation of a good novel): in any of these points of comparison, I maintain that the older writers have a decided and manifest superiority. I might appeal, for the support of this position, to the concurrent testimony of literary men, to the fact that they have outlived contemporary criticism, and are still classics in this fastidious age, and furthermore”-- _Apple_, (looking up from his manuscript.) “What book is that you’re reading out of, Pulito?” “The book of my own intellect, as yet unpublished, Mr. Impertinence,” said Pulito, somewhat disconcerted. _Apple._ “Indeed! As I was looking down, I thought from the rapid and mellifluous flow of words, the elegance and profoundness of the thought, that you were reading loud from some one of the British Essayists. No insinuations, however,” and he chuckled at the effect, while the others smiled at the harmlessness of his sarcasm. _Nescio._ “Don’t suppose, Pulito, that because I prefer the modern to the ancient school among the English novelists, I therefore deny all merit to the latter. It would be strange, indeed, if men, who were admitted _unâ voce_ to be the wits and geniuses of their age, should not have displayed many, and great, and varied excellencies. But won’t you allow that the incongruous mass, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, has gained its greenest laurels from its outrageous oddity? Its eccentricity is so astounding, so far beyond anomaly itself, that criticism pauses aghast, as at ‘the quills of the fretful porcupine,’ unknowing where to strike. You might as soon trace ‘the path of a serpent on a rock,’ or reduce to rule the movements of the wild ass of the desert. It is a mere chaos--a “rudis indigestaque moles.” _Pulito._ “But, my dear fellow, such the author intended to have it.”