In the interim, I tried as much as I could, with verses from Horace and Prior, and all who have lauded the mixture of literary with rural life, to call back the visions of last night and this morning, imagining myself settled in same detached farm of the estate of Glentanner,-- "Which sloping hills around enclose-- Where many a birch and brown oak grows," when I should have a cottage with a small library, a small cellar, a spare bed for a friend, and live more happy and more honoured than when I had the whole barony.

But the sight of Castle Treddles had disturbed all my own castles in the air.

The realities of the matter, like a stone plashed into a limpid fountain, had destroyed the reflection of the objects around, which, till this act of violence, lay slumbering on the crystal surface, and I tried in vain to re-establish the picture which had been so rudely broken.

Well, then, I would try it another way.

I would try to get Christie Steele out of her PUBLIC, since she was not striving in it, and she who had been my mother's governante should be mine.