admiration. It frequently
happened however that in the midst of his good humour a characteristic
refinement of tyranny would suggest itself to his mind. When his subjects,
encouraged by his familiarity, had discarded their precaution, the wayward fit
would seize him, a sudden cloud overspread his brow, his voice transform from
the pleasant to the terrible, and a quarrel of a straw immediately ensue with
the first man whose face he did not like. The pleasure that resulted to others
from the exuberant sallies of his imagination was therefore not unalloyed with
sudden qualms of apprehension and terror. It may be believed that this despotism
did not gain its final ascendancy without being contested in the outset. But all
opposition had been quelled with a high hand by this rural Antæus. By the
ascendancy of his fortune, and his character among his neighbours, he always
reduced his adversary to the necessity of encountering him at his own weapons,
and did not dismiss him without making him feel his presumption through every
joint in his frame. The tyranny of Mr. Tyrrel would not have been so patiently
endured, had not his colloquial accomplishments perpetually come in aid of that
authority which his rank and prowess originally obtained.
    The situation of our squire with the fair was still more enviable than that
which he maintained among persons of his own sex. Every mother taught her
daughter to consider the hand of Mr. Tyrrel as the highest object of her
ambition. Every daughter regarded his athletic form and his acknowledged prowess
with a favourable eye. A form eminently athletic is perhaps always well
proportioned; and one of the qualifications that women are early taught to look
for in the male sex, is that of a protector. As no man was adventurous enough to
contest his superiority, so scarcely any woman in this provincial circle would
have scrupled to prefer his addresses to those of any other admirer. His
boisterous wit had peculiar charms for them; and there was no spectacle more
flattering to their vanity than seeing this Hercules exchange his club for a
distaff. It was pleasing to them to consider that the fangs of this wild beast,
the very idea of which inspired trepidation into the boldest hearts, might be
played with by them with the utmost security.
    Such was the rival that fortune in her caprice had reserved for the
accomplished Falkland. This untamed, though not undiscerning, brute, was found
capable of destroying the prospects of a man, the most eminently qualified to
enjoy and to communicate happiness. The feud that sprung up between them was
nourished by concurring circumstances, till it attained a magnitude difficult to
be paralleled; and, because they regarded each other with a deadly