.

.

meet in St.James's Park, without betraying the least token of recognition." And good, too, is the way in which, as Dr.Fathom goes rapidly down the social hill, he makes excuses for his declining splendour.

His chariot was overturned "with a hideous crash" at such danger to himself, "that he did not believe he should ever hazard himself again in any sort of wheel carriage." He turned off his men for maids, because "men servants are generally impudent, lazy, debauched, or dishonest." To avoid the din of the street, he shifted his lodgings into a quiet, obscure court.

And so forth and so on, in the true Smollett vein.
But, after all, such of the old sparks are struck only occasionally.
Apart from its plot, which not a few nineteenth-century writers of detective-stories might have improved, The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom is less interesting for itself than any other piece of fiction from Smollett's pen.