Page:Sylvester Sound the Somnambulist (1844).djvu/165

 of this he knew nothing. The merchant who had just achieved a great commercial swindle which would stamp him a good man for life—the penny-a-liner, who had been walking all day, sustained only by the hope of an accident, praying that some important personage might fall and break his neck, that some murder might be committed before his eyes, or that some destructive fire might burst out as he passed, and thus enable him to dine on the morrow—the clerk who had just given notice to leave, in the full conviction that his "firm" could not get on without him; a mistake of which he would have the proof practically soon—the tradesman who had a bill for forty pounds due on the morrow, and had not forty shillings to meet it—the little master manufacturer who had been running after money all day and couldn't catch it, and who, for the sake of being a master, worked twenty hours anxiously out of the twenty-four, for a far less sum than he might earn by working ten hours, without this anxiety, as a journeyman—the pompous actor—the envious author—the heartless lawyer—the accomplished thief—the unprincipled gambler—the subtle, smirking, over-reaching publisher—the gaudy cyprian and the haggard milliner—the poor but honest man and the highly respectable, because wealthy, rogue—passed on alike: for Sylvester viewed them only in the mass, without reference to their virtues, their vices, or their cares.

On the arrival of the coach at Charing-cross, Sylvester and his aunt were met by Dr. Delolme, who had been a most intimate friend of Dr. Sound, and at whose house, during their stay in town, they were to reside; and when he had received them with the warmest expressions of unfeigned pleasure, he had their luggage pointed out to his servant, who was directed to bring it after them in a hackney-coach, and then led them to his carriage, and gave the word "home."

Dr. Delolme was one of the most accomplished men of the age. He was not, in a strictly professional sense, one of the most profound, albeit he had far more stuff in him than hundreds who had acquired a reputation for profundity: he was a gentleman, a highly accomplished gentleman, who repudiated with scorn those fraudulent exhibitions of eccentricity by which so many in his profession have been made, and who developed his accomplishments only with the view of inspiring with hope, emulation, or joy, those who came within the sphere of his influence.

And Mrs. Delolme was highly accomplished too; but religious enthusiasm had veiled her accomplishments, and prompted her to assume the air and language of a penitent. Her letters were studded with "D. V." in parentheses. Deo volente was continually on her lips. She had been one of the most lively creatures breathing, and while her elegance and amiability had enchanted the circle of which she had long been the recognised centre, her moral purity was acknowledged to be as perfect as her grace; but since a preacher who had set his whole soul on popularity—the Rev. Gipps Terre—had been the incumbent of the parish in which she resided, he, by virtue of acting and preaching for points, touching their feelings and blinding their judgment, had cleverly succeeded in turning not only her head, but the heads of all the women