Greece? I can decorate my garret with Victorian trophies, antimacassars, walnut highboys, wall-paper representing Roman temples, beneath the columns of which shepherd boys play their pipes, while troops of ladies, garbed like Mrs. Leo Hunter, embark for Cythera on splendid barges. I can examine at my leisure mezzotints and engravings by John Martin, Richard Earlom, Valentine Green, Goltzius, Edelinck, or J. R. Smith, and I can enjoy the mellow cornfields and rich velvety forests of George Inness whenever I feel in the mood to do so, which is not too often. As frequently as I please I can take down from my shelves and dip into The Monk by M. C. Lewis, Headlong Hall by Thomas Love Peacock, The Art of Dining by Abraham Hayward, The Truth about Tristrem Varick by Edgar Saltus, or Chandos by Ouida. No strange, old-fashioned byway, no hidden cranny of painting or literature is denied me, but if I were dying of desire to experience an audition of Purcell's Dido and Æneas, Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie, Balfe's The Maid of Artois, or even Wagner's Die Feen or Puccini's Edgar, I should expire before the medicine was proffered me.
Watteau, Voltaire, Cranach, H. B. Fuller, Rodin, and Joseph Hergesheimer stand ready to please me whenever I am in the proper temper
