t enough
to instruct. Teach us that wealth is not elegance; that profusion is not
magnificence; and that splendour is not beauty. Teach us that taste is
a talisman which can do greater wonders than the millions of the
loanmonger. Teach us that to vie is not to rival, and to imitate not
to invent. Teach us that pretension is a bore. Teach us that wit is
excessively good-natured, and, like champagne, not only sparkles, but
is sweet. Teach us the vulgarity of malignity. Teach us that envy
spoils our complexions, and that anxiety destroys our figure. Catch the
fleeting colours of that sly chameleon, Cant, and show what excessive
trouble we are ever taking to make ourselves miserable and silly. Teach
us all this, and Aglaia shall stop a crow in its course and present
you with a pen, Thalia hold the golden fluid in a Sevres vase, and
Euphrosyne support the violet-coloured scroll.

The four hosts greeted the arrivals and assisted the disembarkations,
like the famous four sons of Aymon.

They were all dressed alike, and their costume excited great attention.
At first it was to have been very plain, black and white and a single
rose; but it was settled that simplicity had been overdone, and, like
a country girl after her first season, had turned into a most affected
baggage, so they agreed to be regal; and fancy uniforms, worthy of the
court of Oberon, were the order of the day. We shall not describe them,
for the description of costume is the most inventive province of our
historical novelists, and we never like to be unfair, or trench upon
our neighbour's lands or rights; but the Alhambra button indicated a
mystical confederacy, and made the women quite frantic with curiosity.

The guests wandered through the gardens, always various, and now a
paradise of novelty. There were four brothers, fresh from the wildest
recesses of the Carpathian Mount, who threw out such woodnotes wild that
all the artists stared; and it was universally agreed that, had they not
been French chorus-singers, they would have been quite a miracle. But
the Lapland sisters were the true prodigy, who danced the Mazurka in
the national style. There was also a fire-eater; but some said he would
never set the river in flames, though he had an antidote against all
poisons! But then our Mithridates always tried its virtues on a stuffed
poodle, whose bark evinced its vitality. There also was a giant in the
wildest part of the shrubbery, and a dwarf, on whom the