elves too fastidious, we went again over our catalogue
_raisonee_ with expectations much sobered, and objections much
modified, and were beginning to find out that Cranley Hall was not so
very large, nor Lanton Abbey so exceedingly damp, when one of our party
exclaimed suddenly, "We never thought of Hatherden Hill! surely that is
small enough and dry enough!" and it being immediately recollected that
Hatherden was only a mile off, we lost sight of all faults in this great
recommendation, and wrote immediately to the lawyer who had the charge
of letting the place, whilst I myself and my most efficient assistant,
sallied forth to survey it on the instant.

It was a bright cool afternoon about the middle of August, and we
proceeded in high spirits towards our destination, talking, as, we went,
of the excellence and agreeableness of our delightful friends, and
anticipating the high intellectual pleasure, the gratification to the
taste and the affections, which our renewed intercourse with persons so
accomplished and so amiable, could not fail to afford; both agreeing
that Hatherden was the very place we wanted, the very situation, the
very distance, the very size. In agreeing with me, however, my companion
could not help reminding me rather maliciously how very much, in our
late worthy neighbours, the Norrises' time, I had been used to hate and
shun this paragon of places; how frequently I had declared Hatherden
too distant for a walk, and too near for a drive; how constantly I had
complained of fatigue in mounting the hill, and of cold in crossing
the common; and how, finally, my half yearly visits of civility had
dwindled first into annual, then into biennial calls, and would
doubtless have extended themselves into triennial marks of remembrance,
if our neighbours had but remained long enough. "To be sure," added he,
recollecting, probably, how he, with his stricter sense of politeness,
used to stave off a call for a month together, taking shame to himself
every evening for his neglect, retaining 'at once the conscience and the
sin!' "To be sure, Norris was a sad bore! We shall find the hill easier
to climb when the Camdens live on the top of it." An observation to
which I assented most heartily.

On we went gaily; just pausing to admire Master Keep, the shoemaker's
farming, who having a bit of garden ground to spare, sowed it with wheat
instead of planting it with potatoes, and is now, aided by his lame
apprentice, very