than to sit with a work-basket in a large lonely saloon, with the pictures of their ancestors looking as if they had indeed lost all sympathy with the living. Besides, a call, in an adjacent street, on one whose milliner is not the same, and whose friends are similar to your own—thus giving ample room for praise and its reverse—such a call is quite another thing from that in the country, which involves, first, a journey through wilds that "seem to lengthen as you go;" and secondly, a luncheon, which it is your duty to eat. Alas! when, in this world, are the agreeable and the necessary united! Then your neighbour is a person whom you see twice a-year—you have not a taste or opinion in common—the news of the one is no news to the other—conversation is a frozen ocean, and
"You speak.
Only to break
The silence of that sea."
Now these were not mornings to Lady Mandeville's taste. As for the dinners, she had only one comfort, that of abusing them after;—and unspeakable consolation, by the by, in most cases! I cannot see why a taste for the coun-
