is the poetic leg, a portent, a valiance. He has it
as Cicero had a tongue. It is a lute to scatter songs to his mistress; a rapier,
is she obdurate. In sooth a leg with brains in it, soul.
    And its shadows are an ambush, its lights a surprise. It blushes, it pales,
can whisper, exclaim. It is a peep, a part revelation, just sufferable, of the
Olympian god - Jove playing carpet-knight.
    For the young Sir Willoughby's family and his thoughtful admirers, it is not
too much to say that Mrs. Mountstuart's little word fetched an epoch of our
history to colour the evening of his arrival at man's estate. He was all that
Merrie Charles's Court should have been, subtracting not a sparkle from what it
was. Under this light he danced, and you may consider the effect of it on his
company.
    He had received the domestic education of a prince. Little princes abound in
a land of heaped riches. Where they have not to yield military service to an
Imperial master, they are necessarily here and there dainty during youth,
sometimes unmanageable, and as they are bound in no personal duty to the State,
each is for himself, with full present, and what is more, luxurious prospective
leisure for the practice of that allegiance. They are sometimes enervated by it:
that must be in continental countries. Happily our climate and our brave blood
precipitate the greater number upon the hunting-field, to do the public service
of heading the chase of the fox, with benefit to their constitutions. Hence a
manly as well as useful race of little princes, and Willoughby was as manly as
any. He cultivated himself, he would not be outdone in popular accomplishments.
Had the standard of the public taste been set in philosophy, and the national
enthusiasm centred in philosophers, he would at least have worked at books. He
did work at science, and had a laboratory. His admirable passion to excel,
however, was chiefly directed in his youth upon sport; and so great was the
passion in him, that it was commonly the presence of rivals which led him to the
declaration of love.
    He knew himself nevertheless to be the most constant of men in his
attachment to the sex. He had never discouraged Lætitia Dale's devotion to him,
and even when he followed in the sweeping tide of the beautiful Constantia
Durham (whom Mrs. Mountstuart called »The Racing Cutter«), he thought of
Lætitia, and looked at her. She was