best. Only think of people lecturing when they know nothing about the density and diameter of what they're talking of!" "Ay, that's bad enough, landlord, but we must make allowances; your society is but newly established, and cannot yet afford to have the best lecturers." "Very true, Sir, very true; we can't all be equally learned, for the impetus must depend upon the circumference. I don't wish to be hard upon the gemman, for give and take's my maximum-nothing diagonal about Tim Wicks, all upon the square root, straightforward as a parallelogram; but how can I sit still and hear a chap talk about sugar of lead, and salt of lead, when I must know more of the trigonometry of them things than he does; for father were a plumber, and melt or hammer his lead which way he would, I'll swear he never got sugar or salt neither but what came from the grocer's! He may talk till he's black in the face about malleability, and fusibility, and friability, ay! and roastability if he likes, but he can't have a segment, no, not a tangent of real ability, which after all, is the only solid hydrostatical fulcrum! Sam Ostler! draw off gig, Lymington coach driving up-water horses. Coming, Sir, coming !" "I don't wonder, Tim, that you soon came away, since there was so little to be learnt, and your time is so precious." "Why, Sir, to tell you the vertical truth, I had half a mind once to stay till the end, on account of poor crooked Martha, my inclined plane, as I call her-d'ye catch the focus, hey?—for as he talked about empy-rheumatic oil, I thought I'd step and ask him for a shilling's worth, since Martha, poor soul! is sadly troubled with the rheumatiz all over her whole hemisphere. But he went on to humbug us, that a diamond was made of charcoal, which appeared to me such a downright false pivot and sham segment, that I clapped on my hat, bolted out of the room, and as Bat Haselgrove was driving by at the moment in his taxed-cart, I jumped into it, he drove me over to the George, and sat me down right slap bang point blank, plump upon my own fulcrum.” "Gadso, landlord! that was lucky; but have you no other news than this? you have gene rally some of the chit-chat of Thaxted to tell me." 66 Why, Sir, the great first principle and primum mobile with us at present is this here fair, which we mean to make a grander one than has been seen here for many a year, and if the gentry attempt to put it down by inert force, we are determined to stand up boldly for our own inverse ratio. No, no, we're not such gudgeons as to be caught with an angle of forty-five degrees; their opposition will only enlarge our axis; and this must ever be the case in a free country like ours, since the percussion is alway proportioned to the area-d' ye catch the focus, hey?" Before Penguin could reply, a carriage drove up to the door, and the landlord ran out of the parlour, calling in the same breath for Tony, Sam Ostler, and Sally Wicks, and muttering to himself a da capo about his bustling life, no peace, toiling from morning to night, &c. &c. Penguin had by this time dispatched his syllabubs, a process, indeed, which had been going on uninterruptedly during the whole of Timothy's catachrestical gabble; Henry shortly after re appeared, when mounting their vehicle, they proceeded towards the Manor-house, into which mansion we shall take the liberty of introducing our readers, while the geologist and his companion are driving thither. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. LONDON: PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLEY, |