catalogue; another in one of the cellars (the cellar where the music

accumulates) of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh; and a third, bound

in morocco, in the possession of Gideon Forsyth. To account for the very

different fate attending this third exemplar, the readiest theory is

to suppose that Gideon admired the tale. How to explain that admiration

might appear (to those who have perused the work) more difficult; but

the weakness of a parent is extreme, and Gideon (and not his uncle,

whose initials he had humorously borrowed) was the author of Who Put

Back the Clock? He had never acknowledged it, or only to some intimate

friends while it was still in proof; after its appearance and alarming

failure, the modesty of the novelist had become more pressing, and the

secret was now likely to be better kept than that of the authorship of

Waverley.

A copy of the work (for the date of my tale is already yesterday) still

figured in dusty solitude in the bookstall at Waterloo; and Gideon, as

he passed with his ticket for Hampton Court, smiled contemptuously at

the creature of his thoughts. What an idle ambition was the author's!

How far beneath him was the practice of that childish art! With his hand

closing on his first brief, he felt himself a man at last; and the

muse who presides over the police romance, a lady presumably of French

extraction, fled his neighbourhood, and returned to join the dance round

the springs of Helicon, among her Grecian sisters.

Robust, practical reflection still cheered the young barrister upon his

journey. Again and again he selected the little country-house in its

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