If it had been published in three volumes, one cannot imagine the most enthusiastic novel-reader knocking up a friend late at night for volume two or volume three.

I have said that I can read _Parismus_ for pastime: but the pastime that it provides is certainly not over-stimulating, and the mild stimulant becomes unsweetened and unlemoned barley-water in books of the _Parthenissa_ class.

If with them conversing one forgets all time, it must be by the influence of the kind go-between Sleep.

We know, of course, that their contemporaries did not go to sleep over them: but it was because they felt that they were being done good to--that they were in the height of polite society--that their manners were being softened and not allowed to be gross.

The time, in its blunt way, was fond of contrasting the attractions of a mistress on one side and "a friend and a bottle" on the other.