In the interim, Clifford had withdrawn his quondam Mentor to the asylum of a coffee-house; and while Mac Grawler's son expanded itself by wine, he narrated the causes of his dilemma. It seems that that incomparable journal the Asinium, despite a series of most popular articles upon the writings of "Aulus Prudentius," to which were added an exquisite string of dialogues, written in a tone of broad humour, viz., broad Scotch (with Scotchmen it is all the same thing), despite these invaluable miscellanies, to say nothing of some glorious political articles, in which it was clearly proved to the satisfaction of the rich, that the less poor devils eat, the better for their constitutions, — despite, we say, these great acquisitions to British literature, the Asinium tottered, fell, buried its bookseller, and crushed its author: Mac Grawler only — escaping, like Theodore from the enormous helmet of Otranto — Mac Grawler only survived. "Love," says Sir Philip Sidney, "makes a man see better than a pair of spectacles." Love of life has a very different effect on the optics, — it makes a man woefully dim of inspection, and sometimes causes him to see his own property in another man's purse! This deception visus, did it impose upon Peter Mac Grawler? He went to Canning. Reader, thou knowest the rest! 