re admitted bucks, the law student,
and the village shop-boy. All the red cloaks had long since been laid
aside to give place to imitation merino shawls, or, in cases of
unusual moderation and sobriety, to mantles of silk. As Eve glanced
her eye around her, she perceived Tuscan hats, bonnets of gay colours
and flowers, and dresses of French chintzes, where fifty years ago
would have been seen even men's woollen hats, and homely English
calicoes. It is true that the change among the men was not quite as
striking, for their attire admits of less variety; but the black
stock had superseded the check handkerchief and the bandanna; gloves
had taken the places of mittens; and the coarse and clownish shoe of
"cow-hide" was supplanted by the calf-skin boot.

"Where are your peasants, your rustics, your milk and dairy
maids--_the people_, in short"--whispered Sir George Templemore to
Mrs. Bloomfield, as they took their seats; "or is this occasion
thought to be too intellectual for them, and the present assembly
composed only of the _elite_?"

"These _are_ the people, and a pretty fair sample, too, of their
appearance and deportment. Most of these men are what you in England
would call operatives, and the women are their wives, daughters, and
sisters."

The baronet said nothing at the moment, but he sat looking around him
with a curious eye for some time, when he again addressed his
companion.

"I see the truth of what you say, as regards the men, for a critical
eye can discover the proofs of their occupations; but, surely, you
must be mistaken as respects your own sex; there is too much delicacy
of form and feature for the class you mean."

"Nevertheless, I have said naught but truth."

"But look at the hands and the feet, dear Mrs. Bloomfield. Those are
French gloves, too, or I am mistaken."

"I will not positively affirm that the French gloves actually belong
to the dairy-maids, though I have known even this prodigy; but, rely
on it, you see here the proper female counterparts of the men, and
singularly delicate and pretty females are they, for persons of their
class. This is what you call democratic coarseness and vulgarity,
Miss Effingham tells me, in England."

Sir George smiled, but, as what it is the fashion of me country to
call 'the exercises,' just then began, he made no other answer.

These exercises commenced with instrumental music, certainly the
weakest side of American civilization. That of the occasio