ed her. The beauty of the climate
and the country, the total absence of care, the constant presence of
amusement, the luxury, gaiety, and refined enjoyment perfectly accorded
with her amiable disposition, her lively fancy and her joyous temper.
She drank deep and eagerly of the cup of pleasure. She entered into all
the gay pursuits of her subjects; she even invented new combinations
of diversion. Under her inspiring rule every one confessed that Elysium
became every day more Elysian. The manners of her companions greatly
pleased her. She loved those faces always wreathed with smiles, yet
never bursting into laughter. She was charmed at the amiable tone in
which they addressed each other. Never apparently were people at the
same time so agreeable, so obliging, and so polished. For in all they
said and did might be detected that peculiar air of high-breeding which
pervades the whole conduct of existence with a certain indefinable
spirit of calmness, so that your nerves are never shaken by too intense
an emotion, which eventually produces a painful reaction. Whatever they
did, the Elysians were careful never to be vehement; a grand passion,
indeed, was unknown in these happy regions; love assumed the milder form
of flirtation; and as for enmity, you were never abused except behind
your back, or it exuded itself in an epigram, or, at the worst, a
caricature scribbled upon a fan.

There is one characteristic of the Elysians which, in justice to them, I
ought not to have omitted. They were eminently a moral people. If a lady
committed herself, she was lost for ever, and packed off immediately to
the realm of Twilight. Indeed, they were so particular, that the moment
one of the softer sex gave the slightest symptoms of preference to
a fortunate admirer, the Elysian world immediately began to look
unutterable things, shrug its moral shoulders, and elevate its
charitable eyebrows. But if the preference, by any unlucky chance,
assumed the nobler aspect of devotion, and the unhappy fair one gave any
indication of really possessing a heart, rest assured she was already
half way on the road to perdition. Then commenced one of the most
curious processes imaginable, peculiar I apprehend to Elysium, but which
I record that the society of less fortunate lands may avail itself of
the advantage, and adopt the regulation in its moral police. Immediately
that it was clearly ascertained that two persons of different sexes took
an irrational