The meeting with Mr. Woodriffe was in many respects agreeable to me, but his own health did not improve, and before we left Glasgow, his disease had evidently made progress. His alacrity of mind, however, suffered no decay; on the contrary, the buoyancy of his spirits—one of his most fatal symptoms—was rather increased, and he enjoyed with zest and eagerness the local peculiarities; but few of the inhabitants afforded him so remarkable a subject of study as Mr. Pullicate.

He considered him as a person of talent, and as one possessed of a discerning spirit, such as he had seldom met with even in the metropolis, but the ci-devant democrat was interesting on another account. His controversy between his republican principles and his good fortune furnished Mr. Woodriffe with much amusement; for although Eric himself was quite sensible that his prosperity had outgrown his refinement, yet a judicious sense of the propriety of suiting his manners to his circumstances, constantly prompted him to aim at a genteeler deportment, and his endeavours were not always felicitous.

“He has mistaken,” said Mr. Woodriffe, “the show for the substance. Let him be a plain character, and he will become an uncommon gentleman.”

Mr. Woodriffe was, however, not aware that the errors which he discovered in the ostentatious Eric, ought properly to have been ascribed to Mrs. Pullicate, now a shrewd and portly matron; ever actuated by an ambitious emulation to be in gorgeous equality with her neighbours, and constant in her endeavours to animate her husband with an energy of the same kind.