casement
of which (the poet's study window), opening upon a superb view as far
as to the pretty spire of Harrow, over domains and patrimonial acres,
not a rood nor square yard whereof our host could call his own, yet
gave occasion to an immoderate expansion of--vanity shall I call
it?--in his bosom, as he showed them in a glowing summer evening. It
was all his, he took it all in, and communicated rich portions of it
to his guests. It was a part of his largess, his hospitality; it was
going over his grounds; he was lord for the time of showing them, and
you the implicit lookers-up to his magnificence.

He was a juggler, who threw mists before your eyes--you had no time
to detect his fallacies. He would say "hand me the _silver_ sugar
tongs;" and, before you could discover it was a single spoon, and
that _plated_, he would disturb and captivate your imagination by a
misnomer of "the urn" for a tea kettle; or by calling a homely bench
a sofa. Rich men direct you to their furniture, poor ones divert you
from it; he neither did one nor the other, but by simply assuming that
everything was handsome about him, you were positively at a demur what
you did, or did not see, at _the cottage_. With nothing to live on, he
seemed to live on everything. He had a stock of wealth in his mind;
not that which is properly termed _Content_, for in truth he was not
to be _contained_ at all, but overflowed all bounds by the force of a
magnificent self-delusion.

Enthusiasm is catching; and even his wife, a sober native of North
Britain, who generally saw things more as they were, was not proof
against the continual collision of his credulity. Her daughters
were rational and discreet young women; in the main, perhaps, not
insensible to their true circumstances. I have seen them assume a
thoughtful air at times. But such was the preponderating opulence of
his fancy, that I am persuaded, not for any half hour together, did
they ever look their own prospects fairly in the face. There was no
resisting the vortex of his temperament. His riotous imagination
conjured up handsome settlements before their eyes, which kept them
up in the eye of the world too, and seem at last to have realised
themselves; for they both have married since, I am told, more than
respectably.

It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on some subjects, or I
should wish to convey some notion of the manner in which the pleasant
creature described the circumstances of his o