With many expressions of gratitude, the contending parties obeyed the mandate, and walked off lovingly together, cheek-by-jowl, as if no irruption of harmony had happened!
“Long life to him!” exclaimed a son of green Erin; “wid a word in the ear he has settled the business at once.”
“And I pray,” said a reverend looking gentleman in black, “that all conflicting powers may meet with like able mediation.”
“Amen!” responded a fellow in the drawling nasil tone of a parish-clerk; and the congregation dispersed.
The tumult thus happily subdued, Sir Felix, with Tom and Bob, rejoined Miss Macgilligan and the group with whom she had been left in charge when the two latter gentlemen came to the Baronet's relief.
The “ardent admirer of the whole of women kind” sustained the jokes of the company with admirable equanimity of temper; and the same young lady who had eulogized his gallantry, now said that it was unfair, and what the Baronet could not possibly mean, to take his words in their literal acceptation; at the same time she highly commended his benevolent interference in the quarrel between the two women, and congratulated him on his address in bringing it to an amicable termination.
Resuming their attention to the still continued line of company, Dashall and his friends remarked that pearls were a prominent part of female ornament at the present levee; particularly, he said, with the galaxy of Civic beauty from the East; for he had recognized so decorated, several elegantes, the wives and daughters of aldermen, bankers, merchants and others, of his City acquaintances.{1} A ponderous state carriage, carved and gilt in all directions, and the pannels richly emblazoned with heraldry, now came slowly up the Mall, and Sir Felix immediately announced the approach of the Lord Mayor of the City of London; but as the vehicle approximated nearer towards him, he became lost in a labyrinth of conjecture, on perceiving, that the pericranium of its principal inmate was enveloped in a wig of appalling dimensions; he now inquired whether the profundity of wisdom was denoted by the magnitude of a wig; and if so, why it was not worn by the Civic Sovereign rather on the seat of justice, where it might operate in terrorem on delinquency, than on the happy occasion of his Majesty's anniversary; when Dashall unravelled the mystery, by acquainting the Baronet, that the personage whom he supposed to be the Lord Mayor of London, was the Lord High Chancellor of England.
1 By what curious links and fantastical relations are mankind connected together. At the distance of half the globe, a Hindoo gains his support by groping at the bottom of the sea for the morbid concretion of a shell-fish, to decorate the throat of a London alerman's wife! It is said that the great Linnæus had discovered the secret of infecting oysters with this perligenous disease; what is become of the secret we know not, as the only interest tee take in oysters, is of a much more vulgar, though perhaps a more humane nature. Mr. Percival, in his Account of the Island of Ceylon, gives a very interesting account of the fishery, and of the Sea-dogs. “This animal is as fond of the legs of Hindoos, as Hindoos are of the pearls of oysters; and as one appetite appears to him much more natural and less capricious' than the other, he never fails to indulge it.”
The company still poured along, numerous and diversified, beyond all former precedent; including all the nobility in town, their ladies, daughters, et cetera; officers of the army and navy, grand crosses and knights companions of the most honourable order of the Bath; dignified sages and learned brethren of the law; and, “though last, not least in our esteem,” the very right reverend Fathers in God, the Lords Bishops, in the costume of sacerdotal panoply; and amidst the fascination of female beauty, setting their affections on things above!{1}
1 Latimer, bishop of Worcester, speaking of the gentlemen of the black cloth, says,—“Well, I would all men would look to their dutie, as God hath called them, and then we should have a flourish-ing Christian common weale. And now I would ask a strange question. Who is the most diligentest bishop and prelate in all Englande, that passeth all the rest in doing his office? 1 can tell, for I know him who it is; I know him well. But now I think I see you listening and hearkening that I should name him. There is one that passeth all the other, and is the most diligent prelate and preacher in all Englande. And will you know who it is? I will tell you. It is the Devil! He is the most diligent preacher of all other; he is never out of his diocese; he is never from his cure; ye shall never fynde him unoccupyed; he is ever in his parish; he keepeth residence at all times; ye shall never fynde him out of the way; call for him when you will he is ever at home; the diligentest preacher in all the realme; no lording or loyteriug can hynder him; he is ever applying his busyness; ye shall never f'ynde him idle I warrant you.”