Begins so slowly, and from such slight source,

  An infant's hand might stem its breach¹ with clay;

  But let the stream get deeper, and philosophy—

  Ay, and religion too—shall strive in vain

  To turn the headlong torrent².

                            Old Play.

The Templars had been regaled by our friend Richie Moniplies in a private chamber³ at Beaujeu's, where he might be considered as good company; for he had exchanged his serving-man's cloak and jerkin for a grave yet handsome suit of clothes, in the fashion of the times, but such as might have befitted an older man than himself. He had positively⁵ declined presenting himself at the ordinary, a point to which his companions were very desirous to have brought him, for it will be easily believed that such wags as Lowestoffe and his companion were not indisposed to a little merriment at the expense of the raw and pedantic⁶ Scotsman; besides the chance of easing him of a few pieces, of which he appeared to have acquired considerable command. But not even a succession of measures of sparkling sack, in which the little brilliant atoms circulated like motes⁷ in the sun's rays, had the least effect on Richie's sense of decorum. He retained the gravity of a judge, even while he drank like a fish, partly from his own natural inclination⁸ to good liquor, partly in the way of good fellowship towards his guests. When the wine began to make some innovation on their heads, Master Lowestoffe, tired, perhaps, of the humours of Richie, who began to become yet more stoically contradictory¹⁰ and dogmatical than even in the earlier part of the entertainment, proposed to his friend to break up their

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