The Doctor drank, the Doctor ate,
Well pleased to find so fair a treat.
Then to his pipe he kindly took,
And, with a condescending look,
Call'd on his good Host to relate
What was the Village's new state.'"
"Exactly so," cried the pursuer of the picturesque, profoundly flattered by Mr. Punch's prodigious memory.
"Aye, prithee, Mr. Punch," said the old Knight, seriously, "tell us what means all this new-fangled nonsense of Parish Meetings, Village Councils, Hodge pitchforked into power, and Squire and Parson out of it, and I know not what revolutionary rubbish and impious absurdity?"
"It means, my dear Knight," replied Mr. Punch pleasantly, "that power and responsibility, otherwise the Village Vote, are, like a new Iphigenia, to rouse the rustic Cymon into manhood and manners, till he of whom it was said that
'His corn and cattle were his only care,