Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/210

 196 the subtle epicurean delight of the artistic temperament;" a passage which may be aptly compared with George Eliot's tamer description of Lucy Deane trotting by her cousin Tom's side, "timidly enjoying the rare treat of doing something naughty." The sensations are practically the same, the methods of delineating them different.

Mrs. Burnett, on the other hand, while indulging us unstintedly in reminiscences of her own childhood, is disposed to paint the picture in cheerful, not to say roseate colors. "The One I Knew the Best of All" was evidently a very good, and clever, and pretty, and well-dressed little girl, who played her part with amiability and decorum in all the small vicissitudes common to infant years. No other children being permitted to enter the narrative, except as lay figures, our attention is never diverted from the small creature with the curls, who studies her geography, and eats her pudding, and walks in the Square, and dances occasionally at parties, and behaves herself invariably as a nice little girl should. It is reassuring, after reading the youthful recollections of Sir