'How comes it,' said the buffoon to the poet, 'that I am so rich and you so poor ?' 'I shall be as rich as you,' was the stinging and true reply, 'whenever I can find a patron as like myself as Prince Scaliger is like you!'" "Yet my birds," said Lucy, caressing the goldfinch, which nestled to her bosom, "are not like me, and I love them.

Nay, I often think I could love those better who differ from me the most.

I feel it so in books,--when, for instance, I read a novel or a play; and you, uncle, I like almost in proportion to my perceiving in myself nothing in common with you." "Yes," said Brandon, "you have in common with me a love for old stories of Sir Hugo and Sir Rupert, and all the other 'Sirs' of our mouldered and bygone race.

So you shall sing me the ballad about Sir John de Brandon, and the dragon he slew in the Holy Land.

We will adjourn to the drawing-room, not to disturb your father." Lucy agreed, took her uncle's arm, repaired to the drawing-room, and seating herself at the harpsichord, sang to an inspiriting yet somewhat rude air the family ballad her uncle had demanded.
It would have been amusing to note in the rigid face of the hardened and habitual man of peace and parchments a certain enthusiasm which ever and anon crossed his cheek, as the verses of the ballad rested on some allusion to the knightly House of Brandon and its old renown.