upon with contempt. Bald was his head, and his nose was not merely
large but immense; but it is idle to grow eloquent upon noses. Has
not Sterne exhausted the theme? have not we ourselves more than once
expatiated upon it? Swakenbergius had a nose, so had Ovidius Naso;
but to neither would Jonathan Hookey's strike its colours, and good
crimson ones they were.

Jonathan, despite his bald head, his diminutive stature, his ample
pot-belly, and ampler nose, was a man of fine feelings. Nature was
outraged when he became a barber. He most assuredly was never destined
by her to shave beards, and manufacture perukes for heads more
brainless, many of them, than his own blocks. He ought to have been a
professor of metaphysics or logic in some famous university, such
as Heidelburg, Gottingen, or Glasgow;--but why lament over cureless
evils? it is sufficient to say he is a barber, and there is an end of
the matter.

We must now return to Merton. His solitary walks on the opposite side
of the street had not even, from the first, escaped the scrutinizing
eyes of Mr. Hookey. No: he saw in the tall, pale, elegant, dark-haired
student the victim of deep sensibility. From seeing him, he wondered,
from wondering he loved him, from loving he adored him: he knew
at once he was no common man. Having perused Byron's _Manfred_, he
conceived him to be such another as that strange character; or he
might be a second Lara; or, more, he might be, nay he was, a glorious
genius, full of high imaginings. Little do we know what bright
thoughts passed through the mind of the enthusiastic Hookey. He cursed
his profession, which debarred him from the fellowship of such a man:
he cursed his nose, which stood between him and the object of his
adoration.