another, these
resources fail, they are frankly bored, and long for London. They are no
longer content, as our fathers were, to entertain their friends with
hospitable simplicity. So profoundly has all society been vulgarized by
the worship of the Golden Calf that, unless people can vie with alien
millionaires in the sumptuousness with which they "do you"--delightful
phrase,--they prefer not to entertain at all. An emulous ostentation has
killed hospitality. All this is treason to a high ideal.

Whatever tends to make the Home beautiful, attractive, romantic--to
associate it with the ideas of pure pleasure and high duty--to connect
it not only with all that was happiest, but also with all that was best,
in early years--whatever fulfils these purposes purifies the fountain of
national life. A home, to be perfectly a home, should "incorporate
tradition, and prolong the reign of the dead." It should animate those
who dwell in it to virtue and beneficence, by reminding them of what
others did, who went before them in the same place, and lived amid the
same surroundings. Thank God, such a home was mine.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Henry Scott Holland.

[20] Anna Maria, Duchess of Bedford, died in 1857.

VII

LONDON

"O'er royal London, in luxuriant May,
While lamps yet twinkled, dawning crept the day.
Home from the hell the pale-eyed gamester steals;
Home from the ball flash jaded Beauty's wheels;
From fields suburban rolls the early cart;
As rests the Revel, so awakes the Mart."
_The New Timon_.

When I was penning, in the last chapter, my perfectly sincere praises of
the country, an incongruous reminiscence suddenly froze the genial
current of my soul. Something, I know not what, reminded me of the
occasion when Mrs. Bardell and her friends made their memorable
expedition to the "Spaniards Tea-Gardens" at Hampstead. "How sweet the
country is, to be sure!" sighed Mrs. Rogers; "I almost wish I lived in
it always." To this Mr. Raddle, full of sympathy, rejoined: "For lone
people as have got nobody to care for them, or as have been hurt in
their mind, or that sort of thing, the country is all very well. The
country for a wounded spirit, they say." But the general verdict of the
company was that Mrs. Rogers was "a great deal too lively and
sought-after, to be content with the country"; and, on second thoughts,
the lady herself acquiesced. I feel