Gryll Grange

The exuberant humour of his former works may be wanting, but the book is delightful for its stores of anecdote and erudition, and unintentionally most amusing through the author's inveterate prejudices and pugnacious hostility to every modern innovation.

Mr. Gryll suggests that they get up an Aristophanic comedy to put on show that Christmas, in which spirit-rappers bring up the shade of his supposed ancestor, Gryllus, to give them his opinion of modern times.

At first slightly disturbed, Opimian finds that his new friend is simply a genial eccentric who wishes to avoid the world in order not to discompose the equanimity of his mind; and who spends his days reading and contemplating "ideal beauty" in the form of a shrine to St. Catherine, a Christian martyr of the third century.

Opimian repeats his visit to Mr. Falconer several times, and at one point encounters a local farmer's son, Harry Hedgegrow, who is in love with one of the seven sisters of the tower.

However, she does not strongly encourage him, and he begins to find himself attracted to Alice Niphet (who accidentally manifests her own interest in him when he endangers his life during the holiday season in various shenanigans, such as experimenting on a new type of sail, and undertaking to tame a stubborn horse).

Meanwhile, Falconer admits to himself that he has fallen in love with Morgana, but hesitates to propose to her out of unwillingness to break up his congenial household with the seven sisters at the tower.

The Aristophanic comedy is finally performed; Gryllus is called up by Circe at the behest of the spirit-rappers; the spirit-rappers ask Gryllus his opinion of modern times, but he is dismissive of engine-ships, locomotives and everything they can tell him of; a competitive examination (a practice begun in Peacock's time, which he strongly opposed)[4] is arranged for various characters, who are all declared unfit by the examiners for failing to answer some irrelevant questions.