pleasure, but his discipline; I believe that he was not far wrong. It
is no use disputing the fact that the married man is always in danger
of the judgment; and it is only by some form of bribery that he can
hope to escape being cast in damages. I resolved on bribery, and made
my cheque the bribe. Here said I, was present wealth, let us be
content. The plea was not received with instant favour, but it was not
wholly ineffectual. By the time we sat down to supper that night we
had all attained to cheerfulness. It was a meal of some tenuity, not
calculated to lie heavy on the stomach; for, said Charlotte, 'If we
have to begin high thinking and plain living, we can't begin too
early.' The only load on my digestion that night was the _Tombs of the
Etruscans_.

It says much for the steadfastness of our convictions, that in this new
crisis of affairs the old resolution to seek a country life passed
unquestioned. What to another had seemed calamity appeared to us
opportunity. When the daily paper came next morning, it was not to the
columns where commerce chronicles its wants that my eye turned, but to
the much more engaging columns where lands and houses were advertised
for sale. This part of the newspaper had long ago attracted me by its
fine air of surreptitious romance. My mind had often been kept aglow
for a whole day by some seductive advertisement of cottages 'situate
amid pine-woods,' or farmhouses, all complete, even to the styes and
kennels, which by all accounts were to be given away. One such
advertisement I particularly remember for a kind of insane generosity
which pervaded it. It described at length a farmhouse, 'stone-built
and covered with ivy' (observe the very definite sense of the
picturesque conveyed in this phrase), containing ten rooms, commanding
pleasant views of a well-wooded country, together with a large orchard,
and one hundred and fifty acres of freehold land, the whole of which