Page:Romance & Reality 1.pdf/321

Rh Blake and Harry Gill. Now, Hofland's pictures are great favourites of mine: there is not only the lovely scene—the moon reflected in her softest mirror, the wave—but something or other that calls up the poetry of memory in the gazer; the battlements of some old castle, whose only banner is now of ivy—or a fallen temple, whose divinity has departed, but whose beauty remains, and whose 'fine electric chain' is one of a thousand associations." "While on the subject of pictures, I heard the other day—we cannot vouch, as the newspapers say, for the truth of the report—that Lady Walsingham has had her picture and her husband's taken in a style at once allegorical and domestic. His lordship is holding a cage of doves, to which she is throwing roses: I understand her ladyship particularly requested the cage might be richly gilt." "As it is the great principle of political economy to tax luxuries, why are not reports taxed? Are they not the chief luxuries of society? Of all my senses, I thank Heaven that of hearing is limited; the dative case is very well—hearing what is said to me; but preserve me from the ablative case—hearing what is said about me!"