“And why not?” enquired Tom.
“Why man for this reason, you must know I had myself the sweetest little sanctuary in the world. I had gothicised my Study, its walls were painted in imitation of oak, my books were arranged with the most unauthor-like neatness, my prints hung, my casts and models all bracketed, and all have vanished like the
—baseless fabric of a vision.”
“And is this your misery,” said Tom, “upon my soul I began to think you had lost your wife; but it seems you have only lost your wits. What the devil did you expect when you joined issue—to live as you have done like a hermit in a cell? Well if this is all I do pity you indeed.”
“But you have not heard half yet. The whole house is transformed.”
“And I think you ought to be reformed,” continued Tom.
Notwithstanding the lightness and satire with which our Hero appeared to treat the subject, poor Distich was not to be stayed in his course.
“Ah!” said he, with a sigh, “In vain did Cicero strain his neck to peep over Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful—Shakespeare beard Blair's Sermons and Humphrey Glinkert or Milton's sightless balls gleam over Sir Walter Scott's Epics—all, all, is chaos and misrule. Even my greenhouse over my head which held three ci-devant pots of mignonette, one decayed mirtle, a soi-disant geranium and other exotics, which are to spring out afresh in the summer—my shrubs are clapped under my couch, and my evergreens stuck over the kitchen fire place, are doomed to this unpropitious hot-bed, in order to make room for pattens, clogs, cloaks, and shawls, for all the old maids in Town.”
Tom bit his lip to stifle a laugh, and treading lightly on the toe of his cousin, had so strongly excited Tallyho's risibility, that it was with difficulty he resisted the momentary impulse.
The routed Benedict continued—“Our Drawing Room, which conveniently holds ten persons, is to be the black hole for thirty—My study, dear beloved retreat, where sonnets have been composed and novels written—this spot which just holds me and my cat, is to be the scene of bagatelle, commerce, or any thing else that a parcel of giggling girls may chuse to act in it,—my statues are converted—Diabolus is made to hold a spermaceti candle, while the Medicean nymph, my Apollo Belvidere, and my dancing fawn, being too bulky to move, are adorned with aprons of green silk, because forsooth Betty says they are vastly undecent with nothing on them, and my wife is quite certain “that no one will visit us, unless we do as other people do.” Alas! until the success of my last poem, we never cared about other people, and I am now absolutely turned out, to make room for them, and advised to come here to-night in order to prepare myself for the approaching festivity.”