they appear to our optics), yet on terra firma saving we could hit upon, that should be an A thing was worth buying then, when we felt the money that we paid for it. still for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue,-which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to spring up beneath their sandals. I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if possible, with still more womanish expressions. Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a salver-two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect! And here the same lady, or another-for likeness is identity on tea-cups is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead a furlong off on the other side of the same strange stream! equivalent. "Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so thread-bare- and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from Barker's in Coventgarden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you should be too lateand when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures and when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome-and when you presented it to me- and when we were exploring the perfectness of it (collating you called it) and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with paste, wh which your impatience would not suffer to be left I was pointing out to my cousin last till daybreak was there no pleasure in evening, over our Hyson, (which we are old- being a poor man? or can those neat black fashioned enough to drink unmixed still of clothes which you wear now, and are so an afternoon) some of these speciosa miracula careful to keep brushed, since we have upon a set of extraordinary old blue china become rich and finical, give you half the X(a recent purchase) which we were now for honest vanity, with which you flaunted it the first time using; and could not help about in that overworn suit-your old remarking, how favorable circumstances corbeau-for four or five weeks longer than had been to us of late years, that we could afford to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort - when a passing sentiment seemed to overshade the brows of my companion. I am quick at detecting these summer clouds in Bridget. Farther on if far or near can be predicated of their world-see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays. Here a cow and rabbit couchant, and coextensive so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay. X "I wish the good old times would come again," she said, "when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean, that I want to be poor; but there was a middle state". so she was pleased to ramble on," in which I am sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, O! how much ado I had to get you to consent in those times!) - we were used to have a debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against, and think what we might spare it out of, and what you should have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen - or sixteen shillings was it? - a great affair we thought it then-which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases now. "When you came home with twenty apologies for laying out a less number of shillings upon that print after Lionardo, which we christened the Lady Blanche;' when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the money. and thought of the money, and looked again at the picture was there no pleasure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing to do, but to walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of Lionardos. Yet do you? "Then, do you remember our pleasant - - walks to Enfield, and Potter's bar, and impossible for them to fill up. With such Waltham, when we had a holyday-holydays, reflections we consoled our pride then — and and all other fun, are gone now we are rich I appeal to you, whether as a woman, I - and the little hand-basket in which I used met generally with less attention and accomto deposit our day's fare of savory cold lamb modation than I have done since in more and salad- and how you would pry about at expensive situations in the house? The noon-tide for some decent house, where we getting in indeed, and the crowding up those might go in and produce our store - only inconvenient staircases, was bad enough, paying for the ale that you must call for but there was still a law of civility to woman and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, recognised to quite as great an extent as and whether she was likely to allow us a we ever found in the other passages — and table-cloth and wish for such another how a little difficulty overcome heightened honest hostess, as Izaak Walton has described the snug seat and the play, afterwards! Now many a one on the pleasant banks of the we can only pay our money and walk in. Lea, when he went a fishing and sometimes You cannot see, you say, in the galleries now. they would prove obliging enough, and some- I am sure we saw, and heard too, well enough times they would look grudgingly upon usthen but sight, and all, I think, is gone but we had cheerful looks still for one another, with our poverty. and would eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall? Now - when we go out a day's pleasuring, which is seldom moreover, we ride part of the way and go into a fine inn, and order the best of dinners, never debating the expense which after all, never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a precarious welcome. -- "There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they became quite common — in the first dish of peas, while they were yet dear—to have them for a nice supper, a treat. What treat can we have now? If we were to treat ourselves now-that is, to have dainties a little above our means, it would be selfish and wicked. It is the very little more that we allow ourselves beyond what the actual poor can get at, that makes what I call a treat-when two people living together, as we have done, now and then indulge themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like; while each apologises and is willing to take both halves of the blame to his single share. I see no harm in people making much of themselves, in that sense of the word. It may give them a hint how to make much of others. But now, what I mean by the word we never do make much of ourselves. None but the poor can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we were, just above poverty. "You are too proud to see a play any where now but in the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit, when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in the Wood-when we squeezed out our shillings a-piece to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery - where you felt all the time that you ought not to have brought me and more strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought me and the pleasure was the better for a little shame and when the curtain drew up, what cared we for our place in the house, or "I know what you were going to say, that what mattered it where we were sitting, it is mighty pleasant at the end of the year when our thoughts were with Rosalind in to make all meet, and much ado we used Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria. to have every Thirty-first Night of December You used to say, that the Gallery was the to account for our exceedings many a long best place of all for enjoying a play socially face did you make over your puzzled accounts, that the relish of such exhibitions must be and in contriving to make it out how we in proportion to the infrequency of going- had spent so much or that we had not that the company we met there, not being in spent so much or that it was impossible general readers of plays, were obliged to we should spend so much next year—and still attend the more, and did attend, to what was we found our slender capital decreasinggoing on, on the stage because a word lost but then, betwixt ways, and projects, and would have been a chasm, which it was compromises of one sort or another, and |