The party accordingly proceeded on their return.
“I hope,” said Mr. Seymour, addressing himself to Mr. Twaddleton, who was walking a few paces before him, “that the maiden ladies have not espied their vicar at a game of marbles; if they should, what a chuckling would there be at their next tea-party!”
“A fig for the spinsters!” exclaimed the vicar, as he hastily turned round, and arrested the progress of the party by his gesture. “You really speak, Mr. Seymour, as though it were derogatory to my character to descend from the more austere pursuits to the simple but innocent amusements of youth. Let me remind you, sir, that the Persian ambassadors found Agesilaus, the Lacedæmonian monarch, riding on a stick.”
“True,” replied Mr. Seymour; “and the ambassadors found Henry the Fourth playing on the carpet with his children; and it is said, that Domitian, after he had possessed himself of the Roman empire, amused himself by catching flies; but these were kings: now I admit that philosophers are monarchs, but monarchs are not always philosophers; you must, therefore, produce some less objectionable authority, if you stand in need of such a sanction. Let me see whether I cannot assist you; there was Socrates, if tradition speaks truly, who was partial to the recreation of riding on a wooden horse, for which, as Valerius Maximus tells us, his pupil Alcibiades laughed at him.”
“I care not who laughs at me,” exclaimed the vicar; “I enjoy the amusements of youth, and agree with Dr. Paley, in regarding the pleasure which they are made to afford, as a striking instance of the beneficence of the Deity; and should you so far relax as to put your plan into execution, of writing a work upon juvenile sports, I hope you will call upon me to compose a eulogy, by way of preface.”
“I shall not forget your offer, depend upon it.”
“Did not Archytas,” resumed the vicar,
“‘He who would scan the earth, and ocean’s bound,
And tell the countless sands that strew the shore,’
as Horace says, invent the children’s rattle?--Toys, my dear sir, have served to unbend the wise, to occupy the idle, to exercise the sedentary, to moralize the dissipated,”--