Page:Romance & Reality 2.pdf/89

Rh tastes, "I do wonder what you see in London to like." "Every thing. I love perfumes: will you tell me the fragrant shower from my crystal flask of bouquet de roi is not equal to your rose, from which I inhale some half-dozen insects, and retain some dozen thorns? I love music: is not the delicate flute-like voice of Sontag equal at least to the rooks which scream by day, and the owls which hoot by night? Is not Howel and James's shop filled with all that human art can invent, or human taste display—bijouterie touched with present sentiment, or radiant with future triumph? Or your milliner's, where vanity is awakened but to be gratified, and every feminine feeling is called into action? Are not those objects of more interest than a field with three trees and a cow? And then for society—heaven defend me from localities, your highways and byways of conversation; where a squire, with a cast-iron and crimson countenance, details the covey of fourteen, out of which he killed five; or his lady, with the cotton velvet gown—her dinner-dress ever since she married—recounts the trouble she has with her servants, or remarks that it is a great shame—indeed, a