The old volcanistic metaphor is especially apt: a thick, hard crust of earth, beneath which bubbles, hot liquid magma pressing for release above.

This legal, and, as it should seem, injudicious profanation, so abhorrent to out stricter principles, was received with a very faint murmur, ...

Although the Celebrity was almost impervious to sarcasm, he was now beginning to exhibit visible signs of uneasiness, the consciousness dawning upon him that his eccentricity was not receiving the ovation it merited.

When these elegancies and comfortabilities were suitably disposed—as, you may be sure, they were that very evening—the little reception-room was, so Mrs. Green declared, quite the 'genteelest' in Wickham.