"It is the common opinion, and I confess I should like the building better were it less continental."
"Why, my old friend, it is a nondescript--original--Effingham upon Doolittle, if you will; and, as for models, it is rather more English than any thing else."
"Well, Mr. John, I am glad to hear this, for I do confess to a disposition rather to like the house. I am dying to know, Miss Eve, if you saw all our distinguished contemporaries when in Europe?--That to me, would be one of the greatest delights of travelling!"
"To say that we saw them all, might be too much; though we certainly did meet with many."
"Scott, of course."
"Sir Walter we had the pleasure of meeting, a few times, in London."
"And Southey, and Coleridge, and Wordsworth, and Moore, and Bulwer, and D'Israeli, and Rogers, and Campbell, and the grave of Byron, and Horace Smith, and Miss Landon, and Barry Cornwall, and--"
"Cum multis aliis" put in John Effingham, again, by way of arresting the torrent of names. "Eve saw many of these, and, as Tubal told Shylock, 'we often came where we did hear' of the rest. But you say nothing, friend Tom, of Goethe, and Tieck, and Schlegel, and La Martine, Chateaubriant, Hugo, Delavigne, Mickiewicz, Nota, Manzoni, Niccolini, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. &c."
Honest, well-meaning Mr. Howel, listened to the catalogue that the other ran volubly over, in silent wonder; for, with the exception of one or two of these distinguished men, he had never even heard of them; and, in the simplicity of his heart, unconsciously to himself, he had got to believe that there was no great personage still living, of whom he did not know something.
"Ah, here comes young Wenham, by way of preserving the equilibrium," resumed John Effingham, looking out of a window--"I rather think you must have forgotten him, Ned, though you remember his father, beyond question."