rs who build the 'many mansions' up above
there; and the angelic surveyors, who measured that four-square city
with their measuring reeds--I wonder what they think, or are supposed to
think, of the laying out of ground by this nation, which has set itself,
as it seems, literally to accomplish, word for word, or rather fact for
word, in the persons of those poor whom its Master left to represent
him, what that Master said of himself--that foxes and birds had homes,
but He none.

Then, next to the gentlemen's game of hunting, we must put the ladies'
game of dressing. It is not the cheapest of games. I saw a brooch at a
jeweller's in Bond Street a fortnight ago, not an inch wide, and without
any singular jewel in it, yet worth 3,000_l._ And I wish I could tell
you what this 'play' costs, altogether, in England, France, and Russia
annually. But it is a pretty game, and on certain terms, I like it; nay,
I don't see it played quite as much as I would fain have it. You ladies
like to lead the fashion:--by all means lead it--lead it thoroughly,
lead it far enough. Dress yourselves nicely, and dress everybody else
nicely. Lead the _fashions for the poor_ first; make _them_ look well,
and you yourselves will look, in ways of which you have now no
conception, all the better. The fashions you have set for some time
among your peasantry are not pretty ones; their doublets are too
irregularly slashed, and the wind blows too frankly through them.

Then there are other games, wild enough, as I could show you if I had
time.

There's playing at literature, and playing at art--very different, both,
from working at literature, or working at art, but I've no time to speak
of these. I pass to the greatest of all--the play of plays, the great
gentlemen's game, which ladies like them best to play at,--the game of
War. It is entrancingly pleasant to the imagination; the facts of it,
not always so pleasant. We dress for it, however, more finely than for
any other sport; and go out to it, not merely in scarlet, as to hunt,
but in scarlet and gold, and all manner of fine colours: of course we
could fight better in grey, and without feathers; but all nations have
agreed that it is good to be well dressed at this play. Then the bats
and balls are very costly; our English and French bats, with the balls
and wickets, even those which we don't make any use of, costing, I
suppose, now about fifteen millions of money annually to each nation;
all of wh