Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/46

46 ' The consequence was, that seated by the only young man I had beheld, I acted upon him like an air-pump, suspending his very breath and motion; and my asking him for a mince-pie, a dish of which I had been for some time surveying with longing eyes, acted like an electric shock—and his start not a little discomposed a no-age-at-all, silk-vested spinster, whose plate was thereby deposited in her lap—and last not least, in the hurry, he forgot to help me!

"My dear madam, I can forgive (I can do no more) your liking the country in preference to London. Both yourself and Mr. Thomson passed your childhood there; and I believe, like the absolute necessity of wigs for the bishops and judges, there is an absolute belief in the enjoyments of childhood; though, in my particularly private opinion, these reminiscences are but of triangular caps, certain donations on the right or left ear, as was most convenient, verbs, graphies, and, climax of intellectual misery, the multiplication-table! Be this as it may, it is my firm belief that the softened remembrance of these said scenes has thrown a poetical halo round the country, that it is only because you are not there which makes it so desirable to you. Nothing, I grant, can be more luxurious than the gush of fresh air, the sweep of green fields, the fine old trees and the twilight of summer; but it is coming from streets, it is the very knowledge that your pleasure is passing as you enjoy it, that makes a month or two in the country so delightful. But toujours perdrix! the very poetry of Surrey's beautiful landscapes would become prose in time. As for social intercourse there is none. I grant you a round of magnificent dinners—I allow the excellence of the champagne,