Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/79

76, a Romilly, a Hallam. Should not the poet have seen within these bounding young frames immeasurable faculties, capacities for love and virtue, that eternity cannot exhaust?

The children here strike me as not having the bright, intellectual countenances of ours, which indicate their early development; but, as a physical production, the English boy, with his brilliant complexion and sturdy frame, is far superior to ours.

We have nothing corresponding, my dear C., to the luxury of space and adornment of this play-ground of Eton. The eye does not perceive its boundaries; the Thames passes through it, and the trees have been growing, and, at a fair rate, for hundreds of years.

C.,

London breakfast party is a species of entertainment quite unknown to us, and we should not find it easy to acclimate. it It is not suited to our condition of society. Suppose E. attempting such a thing at New-York. She would naturally invite S. S. as the most agreeable woman of her acquaintance. The answer would probably be, "The children are ailing, and she cannot come." She, like most of our mothers, never leaves her house if there be a shadow in the nursery. Then Mrs. B.: "No, she expects a few friends to dinner, and she must overlook her servants;" and so on, and so on. But if the women, whose habits are most flexible, could be managed, where would you find half a dozen