r asleep--the chairs being
couch-like, the couches bed-like, the beds, whether tent or canopy,
enveloped in a drapery of dreams.

We go to bed at no stated hour--but when we are tired of sitting up,
then do we lie down; at any time of the night or the day; and we rise,
neither with the lark, nor the swallow, nor the sparrow, nor the cock,
nor the owl, nor the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars, nor Lucifer, nor
Aurora, but with Christopher North. Yellow, or green, or blue, or
crimson, or fawn, or orange, or pinky light salutes our eyes, as sleep's
visionary worlds recede and relapse into airy nothing, and as we know of
a certainty that _these_ are real web-and-woof damask curtains, _that_
flock palpable on substantial walls.

True wisdom soon accommodates itself even to involuntary or inevitable
change--but to that which flows from our own sweet will, however sudden
and strong, it instantly moulds itself in a novel delight, with all its
familiar and domestic habits. Why, we have not been in 99 Moray Place
for a week--nay, not for two days and nights--till you might swear we
had been all our life a Cit, we look so like a Native. The rustic air of
the Lodge has entirely left us, and all our movements are metropolitan.
You see before you a Gentleman of the Old School, who knows that the
eyes of the town are upon him when he seeks the open air, and who
preserves, even in the privacy of the parlour, that dignity of dress and
demeanour which, during winter, befits his age, his rank, and his
character. Now, we shave every morning; John, who in his boyish days
served under Barbarossa, lightly passes the comb through our "sable
silvered;" and then, in our shawl dressing-gown, we descend about ten to
our study, and sit, not unstately, beside the hissing urn at our
protracted breakfast. In one little month or less, "or ere our shoes are
old," we feel as if we had belonged to _this_ house alone, and it to us,
from our birth. The Lodge is seen to be standing in its stillness, far
away! Dear memories of the pensive past now and then come floating upon
the cheerful present--like birds of fairest plumage floating far inland
from the main. But there is no idle longing--no vain regret. This, we
say, is true wisdom. For each scene and season--each pleasure and
place--ought to be trusted to itself in the economy of human life, and
to be allowed its own proper power over our spirit. People in the
country are often restless to return to town-