g! Why should I come back to
Dresden? The very inclination that dooms me thither should furnish
reasons for my staying away."

In this mood, the Herrnhuthers, in their right-angled, whitewashed
world, were little attractive.

"If the Herrnhuthers were right in their notions, the world would
have been laid out in squares and angles and right lines, and
everything would have been white and black and snuff-color, as they
have been clipped by these merciless retrenchers of beauty and
enjoyment. And then their dormitories! Think of between one and
two hundred of these simple gentlemen cooped up at night in one
great chamber! What a concert of barrel-organs in this great
resounding saloon! And then their plan of marriage! The very birds
of the air choose their mates from preference and inclination; but
this detestable system of lot! The sentiment of love may be, and
is, in a great measure, a fostered growth of poetry and romance, and
balder-dashed with false sentiment; but with all its vitiations, it
is the beauty and the charm, the flavor and the fragrance, of all
intercourse between man and woman; it is the rosy cloud in the
morning of life; and if it does too often resolve itself into the
shower, yet, to my mind, it only makes our nature more fruitful in
what is excellent and amiable."

Better suited him Prague, which is certainly a part of the "naughty
world" that Irving preferred:

"Old Prague still keeps up its warrior look, and swaggers about with
its rusty corselet and helm, though both sadly battered. There
seems to me to be an air of style and fashion about the first people
of Prague, and a good deal of beauty in the fashionable circle.
This, perhaps, is owing to my contemplating it from a distance, and
my imagination lending it tints occasionally. Both actors and
audience, contemplated from the pit of a theatre, look better than
when seen in the boxes and behind the scenes. I like to contemplate
society in this way occasionally, and to dress it up by the help of
fancy, to my own taste. When I get in the midst of it, it is too
apt to lose its charm, and then there is the trouble and ennui of
being obliged to take an active part in the farce; but to be a mere
spectator is amusing. I am glad, therefore, that I brought no
letters to Prague. I shall leav