II.
We have selected the following episodical chapter in preference to anything relating to the mere story of George Barnwell, with which most readers are familiar.
Up to this passage (extracted from the beginning of Vol.

II.) the tale is briefly thus: The rogue of a Millwood has come back every day to the grocer's shop in Chepe, wanting some sugar, or some nutmeg, or some figs, half a dozen times in the week.
She and George de Barnwell have vowed to each other an eternal attachment.
This flame acts violently upon George.

His bosom swells with ambition.
His genius breaks out prodigiously.

He talks about the Good, the Beautiful, the Ideal, &c., in and out of all season, and is virtuous and eloquent almost beyond belief--in fact like Devereux, or P.Clifford, or E.Aram, Esquires.
Inspired by Millwood and love, George robs the till, and mingles in the world which he is destined to ornament.

He outdoes all the dandies, all the wits, all the scholars, and all the voluptuaries of the age--an indefinite period of time between Queen Anne and George II .-- dines with Curll at St.John's Gate, pinks Colonel Charteris in a duel behind Montague House, is initiated into the intrigues of the Chevalier St.
George, whom he entertains at his sumptuous pavilion at Hampstead, and likewise in disguise at the shop in Cheapside.
His uncle, the owner of the shop, a surly curmudgeon with very little taste for the True and Beautiful, has retired from business to the pastoral village in Cambridgeshire from which the noble Barnwells came.
George's cousin Annabel is, of course, consumed with a secret passion for him.
Some trifling inaccuracies may be remarked in the ensuing brilliant little chapter; but it must be remembered that the author wished to present an age at a glance: and the dialogue is quite as fine and correct as that in the "Last of the Barons," or in "Eugene Aram," or other works of our author, in which Sentiment and History, or the True and Beautiful, are united..