Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/47

44 prostitution. We might, indeed, had we been wise, have found many of his criticisms just and salutary, and thanked him for them, and have delighted in his frankness, his sagacity, and his vein of very pleasant humour; but, alas! our Saxon blood is always uppermost, and we go on cherishing our infallibility, and, like a snappish cook, had much rather spoil our own pie than have a foreign finger in it. It is an old trick of the English bull-dog to bark at his neighbour's door, but let him do so if he will caress you at bis own.

, my dear C., a disposition to self-glorification from one circumstance of our journey from Southampton. My girls and I took our seats on the top of the coach, paying for two inside seats in case of rain, of which, I take it in England, there are always nine chances out of ten. You may well ask why I boast of this, when we gained the obvious advantage of using our eyes in this rich and new scene; and when they are nearly as useless inside the coach as were Jonah's to him in his "extra exclusive." You know I am a coward on instinct, and to a novice a seat on the top of an English coach is startling; and it is somewhat perilous, the coach being topheavy with the number of passengers and mass of baggage, and we were not yet accustomed to the security of these smooth roads. And, besides, you cannot expect us to he exempt from the general weakness of wishing to impress the grooms, porter, coachmen,