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xviii giving descriptive and appropriate dialogue to classes of society, far more capable of yielding interest or amusement to persons of any mental vigour, whatever be their rank, than trite copies of the languid inanities of a drawing-room, or lifeless portraits of originals, whose very boast it is to be scarcely alive.

For any occasional retaliation on critics, enemies, or Scotchmen—(with me, for the most part, they