“I beg that Mr. Twaddleton may be admitted.--Jacob, place a chair.”
“Mr. Twaddleton,” said the Major, as he advanced towards the door to meet his visitor, “I feel obliged and honoured by your kind attention. As a perfect stranger, I could scarcely have expected this civility; but your village, surrounded as it is by all the softer charms of Nature, is calculated to impress the hearts of its inhabitants with a kindred amenity. The inhabitants are, doubtless, much attached to their country.”
“Proverbially so: never was Ulysses more attached to his Ithaca! Allow me, also, to say that we all rejoice at the arrival of visitors; and, as vicar of the parish of Overton, I should consider myself criminally deficient in my duty were I to suffer a respectable stranger to depart from us without his having received the mark of my respect, and the tender of my humble but cordial hospitality. I am an old-fashioned person, Major Snapwell, and am well aware that these antiquated notions do not altogether accord with the cold and studied forms of the present day.”
“Mr. Twaddleton,” exclaimed the delighted Major, “I thank thee, most heartily thank thee, in the name of all those whose hearts have not yet been benumbed by worldly indifference. Sit thee down--I abhor ceremony--and let me beg of you not to take offence at a question to which I am most anxious you should give me an answer. Are you, my dear Sir, as I have just reasons for supposing, an Antiquary?”
“I am undoubtedly attached to pursuits which might have favoured such a report.”
“I thought so; I guessed as much. Then give me your hand; we must be friends and associates. If there be a pursuit on earth to which I am devotedly attached, it is to that of antiquities; and, let me add,” continued the Major with increasing animation, for, like bottled beer, he was the brisker for warmth, “that if there be a literary character to whom the professor of arms ought to feel superior gratitude, it is to the antiquary. How many victories, what valiant deeds, must have perished in the memory of mankind but for the kind offices of the virtuoso! under whose vivifying touch the laurels of the victor have bloomed with renovated vigour! and when the scythe of Time has left them to wither, and to be scattered on the wings of the wind, he collects their remains, and piously deposits them in a splendid mausoleum, in order to preserve them to the latest posterity!”
It were difficult to say, whether astonishment at the Major’s warmth, delight at the congenial sentiments he had expressed, or admiration at the language in which they had been conveyed, was the feeling predominant in the vicar’s mind, nor do we deem it necessary to inquire; suffice it to say, that, from the conversation of a few minutes, these two gentlemen felt incited to a mutual regard by sympathy and congeniality of soul; so true is it that, while we may be strangers with the companions of years, we may become friends with the strangers of yesterday!
“Major Snapwell,” said the vicar, “I may truly mark this day in the diary of my life in red letters; your society will add to my happiness, by extending the sphere of my literary intercourse. When may I expect the pleasure of your company at the vicarage? I am really impatient to show you my coins and a few dainty morsels of virtù.”
“I shall be at your service to-morrow,” answered the Major; “but I must now say something about my plans, for it is possible that you may assist me in carrying them into execution.”
“Command me,” said the vicar.