Page:Dr Stiggins, His Views and Principles.pdf/152

 Richard. If I may parody a passage from a very different writer, Miss Yonge has painted for us an eternal tea-table, and the hissing urn seems to whisper that the tea is not too strong. And then note the landscape which serves as a background to these deeply interesting events. There are no bottomless vales and boundless floods, no shoreless seas or sacred rivers, no cedarn caves or Titan woods—none of the distorted and unhealthy landscapes that presented themselves to the opium-drugged minds of the unhappy Edgar Poe and the ill-fated Coleridge. Just as I am sure that there were no magic casements in Dr. May's most comfortable residence, so I feel convinced that one might seek in vain within a large radius from the agreeable country town in which he practised for anything remotely resembling fairy lands forlorn. No, we seem to look from solid red-brick houses over placid meadows, watered by gentle and sluggish streams, bordered by well-trimmed hedges with all the gates and stiles in excellent repair.