would be at her wit's end; but she trusted she would not be permitted to pass it: she threw herself upon the generosity of the gentlemen,—she always did, indeed; and she trusted the generous gentlemen would inform her, when she came to her stage, that it was time for her to get out. I had rarely seen, except in old play-books, written when our dramatists of the French school were drawing ladies'-maids of the time of Charles the Second, a character of the kind quite so stage-like in its aspect; and in a quiet way was enjoying the exhibition. And the passenger who sat fronting me in the carriage—an elderly lady of the Society of Friends—was, I found, enjoying it quite as much and as quietly as myself. A countenance of much transparency, that had been once very pretty, exhibited at every droll turn in the dialogue the appropriate expression. Remarking to a gentleman beside me that good names were surely rather a scant commodity in England, seeing they had not a few towns and rivers, which, like many of the American ones, seemed to exist in duplicate and triplicate,—they had three Newcastles, and four Stratfords, and at least two river Ouses,—I asked him how I could travel most directly by railway to Cowper's Ouse. He did not know, he said; he had never heard of a river Ouse except the Yorkshire one, which I had just seen. The Quaker lady supplied me with the information I wanted, by pointing out the best route to Olney and the circumstance led to a conversation which only terminated at our arrival at Leeds. I found her possessed, like many of the Society of Friends, whom Howitt so well describes, of literacy taste, conversational ability, and extensive information; and we expatiated together over a wide range. We discussed English poets and poetry; compared notes regarding our critical formulas and canons, and found them wonderfully alike; beat over the Scottish Church question, and some dozen or so
