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Rh Francis and his brother were especially happy: they helped, or rather retarded, the spreading their dinner—every dish was to be ornamented with the wild flowers they had gathered; and they ran about, if not with all the utility, with all the celerity of goblin pages. I do not think childhood the happiest period of our life; but its sense of happiness is peculiarly keen. Other days have more means and appliances of pleasure; but then their relish is not so exquisite. It all, however, comes to the same in the long-run. The child has to learn the multiplication-table—the man has to practise it. "I am happy," said Lady Mandeville, "to find I have not lost all taste for those pleasures called simple and natural, as all out-of-door pleasures are denominated." "Even in England, whose climate you deprecate, in that spirit of amiable opposition which I once heard you call the key-arch of conversation," replied Emily, "I always loved being out in the open air. I have a feeling of companionship with our old trees; and my thoughts take, as it were, freer and more tangible shapes. I always used to go and think in the shrubbery."