Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/73

Rh creature has even drank tea with us. Now I admit that home is an Englishman's boast and delight—that the enjoyments to be found in the bosom of your family are to be found nowhere else—excepting in every moral essay. Still—still—must not one confess one should like to pepper and salt domestic felicity with a few strangers now and then?

"Never was I so completely out of my element before; for I own I do not consider the theatre to be a sort of open house kept by Lucifer himself. Sorry am I to tell you that I, who pass in London for a decent sort of person, rather inclined (when out of your company) to respectable Toryism, am here held to be somewhat immoral, and rather irreligious. The proof of the first is, I inadvertently quoted a line from one of Mr. Hunt's poems, and said I thought Godwin clever. For the second, I rashly preferred Miss Edgeworth's 'Tales for Children,' to 'Henry Milner,' by Mrs. Sherwood. Yet I am wonderfully popular, and my departure is earnestly deprecated. Indeed, I cannot say too much of the kindness I have received. Still I am too thoroughly London in all my ways to take cordially to the country. I miss the variety, the generality, the freedom of town talk. I miss new books, and I miss new faces (and don't I also miss familiar ones? Say that for me in your prettiest speech.)

"The only modern publication that comes into the house is 'Blackwood's Magazine;' no Gazette; no newspaper; and no book younger than some three years old; at least till it has learnt to go alone. My poetry is certainly very popular, though they wonder I do not emulate Mr.'s polish; and my uncle has looked out for me a vast collection of