Spread adhered to his declaration manfully enough. Barker was instantly in his game-cock attitude, with his back to the fire, and bristling with pugnacity. "I'll tell you my mind, Spread, frankly, as I always do. The idea of a man like you, who has passed fifty years of his life in Liverpool, between the docks and the counting-house-the idea of such a man turning squire, farmer, shepherd, is the most absurd, ridiculous, preposterous, nonsensical thing I ever heard of!" "Go on," said Spread, resignedly. Barker did go on. What qualifications have you for a country gentleman? What do you know of farming, of plowing, or harrowing, of planting, pruning, fencing, sowing, or reaping? You have read Virgil-perhaps Theocritus: I don't think you have read a line of Varro, or Columella. There's the sum total of your qualifications to join the agricultural interest. What's a rake ?-what's mangel-wurzel ?— what's pottage ?" Rhyme for cottage," replied Spread, disposed to be vexed, but keeping his temper "Don't do it, Spread-don't go cottaging and pottaging it at this time of your life: it's absurd enough for a farce. I'll call you Menalcas." "I anticipate it," said the merchant, with a mock air of resignation, as if the threatened penalty was of the heaviest nature; "but you have been running away with the story, as usual,” he added, in his natural tone. "One can live in the country without being either squire or farmer." "To live in the country," cried Barker, "a man ought to be either a farmer, a fox-hunter, a poet, or a satyr. Are you one of the four?" "Not one; at the same time-" "A cottage!" interrupted Barker, with visions before his eyes of eglantine and earwigs. 66 You won't hear me," said Spread, with good-humored impatience. 66 I always gave you credit," persisted Barker, "for knowing what a comfortable house was as well as any man in England." "And therefore you conclude that I am going to cottage it, as you call it. I never said a word about a cottage." When Barker was in the wrong he never admitted it; but his practice was to shift the ground a little. Besides, he had been internally asking himself the question, What is it to me where the Spreads live-Liverpool or London, town or country? "Have you fixed on a locality?" he now inquired, suddenly assuming a tone of indifference: "have you a house in your eye?" "As to locality," said Spread, “my present idea is to take a villa at Norwood." "Norwood!-nonsense!-why Norwood?? "Or Richmond," continued Spread, having reasons of his own for not insisting on the locality which he named first. 66 In fact nothing is settled as yet. I am afraid we shall not find it easy to get a place to suit us; we are not very easy to please." Why should you?" demanded Barker. 66 Nobody is, or ought to be, in houses, or in any thing else, who has true taste, and a fortune to enable him to indulge it. Far from being a virtue, what is vulgarly called contentment is, in nine cases out of ten, a vice, sir, and a shabby one." Here the bachelor was clearly in the right. Let those to whose happy lot fall the choicest grapes of the cluster-those on which the sun has gazed longest and hottest-the full, dark, rich ones, such as are pressed into the cups of kings and fill the goblets of dukes and archdukes-squeeze them to the last sweet drop, squeeze them and drain them utterly: there are twenty green and sour on the bunch for one such ruddy darling of the summer. But we must enjoy the sweets of life without vainly expecting to avoid its bitters. It is easy to talk of shaking off care, and evading duties and obligations; the thing is possible, no doubt, for a certain time and to a certain extent; the best proof is that Mr. Barker contrived to live to the age of forty on the no-responsibility principle, as if he was no part of the great machine, as careless and uncaredfor as the jolly miller in the song. But life is life; humanity is humanity; to be in the world and not of the world is systematically practicable only in the apostolic sense. Life is made up of relations, affinities, dependencies, connections, ties, and obligations: they are as numerous as the wiles of women; as involved as the schemes of diplomacy; as thick, and in the long run as inevitable, as the traps and pitfalls on the bridge of Mirza. To try to escape them is to try to elude a universal law, and, like every such endeavor, is sure to terminate in failure, if not in punishment. The attempt is selfish, and selfishness may succeed for a while, but never eventually or entirely triumphs. Barker and Spread scarcely ever met without a battle upon this point. Spread was always urging his friend to change his mode of life, leave the Albany, enter the world, take a wife, and "give hostages to fortune." This was a phrase that always provoked Barker. 66 I call it tempting fortune," he used always to reply, on which Mr. Spread never failed to rejoin that it was one thing to tempt fortune and another to trust Providence, to which Barker would reply with a growl, and change the subject. CHAPTER VI. Bear me, oh! bear me, to sequester'd scenes, Windsor Forest. Mr. Spread in search of a House-Conflicting Tastes in Houses-Arguments for and against Norwood-Mrs. Harry Farquhar-Mr. Barker accompanies Spread House-hunting-The Poetry of Auctioneering-Remarks on the Names and Sites of Villas-Mr. Spread finds a House to suit the Narrowsmiths, but no House to suit Himself-The House-hunters' Return to Town-Dine at the Piazza, Covent Garden-The Four Novelists-Their interesting Conversation-How Mr. Spread found by Accident what he had failed to discover by laborious Investigation. No-it was not a very easy matter to find the kind of thing the Spreads wanted. A great many wishes were to be gratified, a great many fancies indulged, a great many requisites combined. As to cottages, they were out of the question; they detested cottages just as much as Mr. Barker did. What they all agreed in coveting was a good, handsome country-house. The first point to be settled was the locality; here tastes varied considerably: Augusta's was pastoral, Philip's aquatic, Elizabeth's alpine, the mother's was chiefly horticultural, Mrs. Martin's academic and sylvan; Mr. Spread's own taste so vaguely and abstractedly rural, that he was almost equally divided between the forest faction, the garden interest, the marine department, and the mountain party. If he had any private feeling it was in favor of sheltered walks and sunny terraces, for exercise, health, and conversation. Then the junior branches had their inclinations too: Mysie was for an island, Katherine only insisted on a grotto, Theodore was probably most anxious about an orchard, and a paddock for a pony. Now, it was no easy matter to unite all these desiderata, even with the aid of the supplement of the Times," and the guidance of George Robins. A place equally haunted by Naiads, Oreads, Dryads, and Nereids was difficult to 66 discover; and then Flora must reign, too; and Bacchus and Ceres were not to be excluded. There were votes for North Wales, votes for South, suffrages for Cumberland, voices for the Isle of Wight, voices for Scotland-nay, at one moment, there was a feeling manifested in favor of the lakes of Killarney, and it was no antiIrish prejudice on the part of any member of the family that prevented them from crossing the Channel in quest of a settlement. Norwood had fair pretensions. Mrs. Spread had a married sister, Mrs. Harry Farquhar, who resided there, and that was an argument for Norwood, not incapable of being answered, but still of considerable weight, pressed as it was by a lady who was wont to carry her points, and carry them with a high hand into the bargain. Mrs. Farquhar was a singular woman, very different from her sister, smart, clever, daring, masculine, a termagant wife, a capricious mother, an ardent friend, and a bitter enemy. Her good points, however, outweighed her bad ones-at least they did so in the estimation of the Spreads; she was partial to them, in turn, and working heaven and earth to have them near her; there was no other spot, she vowed, in all England to suit them, and she was actually in treaty for a house, which she took upon herself to say was just the house for them. But there were conflicting considerations: Mrs. Farquhar was too restless and meddling a spirit to make a very desirable neighbor, even to her own sister, and, besides, there was so much ill-blood between her and Mr. Barker, that Mr. Spread had cause to apprehend that he could not fix himself in that lady's vicinity without sacrificing the society of his oldest and dearest friend. We have seen that, in his late conversation with Barker, Spread drew in his horns the moment he had inadvertently mentioned Norwood, and then talked of Richmond as the situation not unlikely to be ultimately selected for his séjour. He could not have named a place more likely than the latter to mitigate the rancor of his friend's animosity to the country. The facility of access from town, by land and by water, its decided suburban character, its populousness, its notoriety, with the attraction of the Star and Garter, were all such strong recommendations in the bachelor's eyes that he prevailed upon Mr. Spread, before he had been a week in town, to decide upon Richmond or its immediate neighborhood, without consulting with his family any more upon the subject. Indeed, there was no great occasion to do so, for Richmond united all the conditions insisted on by the several members of the Spread confederation to a greater degree than Norwood. There was even an island for Mysie, and a grotto, at Twickenham, for the young lady with cavernous propensi |