herefore, is the period during which happiness is in season, which, in
my judgment, enters the room with the tea-tray; for tea, though ridiculed
by those who are naturally of coarse nerves, or are become so from wine-
drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from so refined a
stimulant, will always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual;
and, for my part, I would have joined Dr. Johnson in a _bellum
internecinum_ against Jonas Hanway, or any other impious person, who
should presume to disparage it. But here, to save myself the trouble of
too much verbal description, I will introduce a painter, and give him
directions for the rest of the picture. Painters do not like white
cottages, unless a good deal weather-stained; but as the reader now
understands that it is a winter night, his services will not be required
except for the inside of the house.

Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, and not more than seven
and a half feet high. This, reader, is somewhat ambitiously styled in my
family the drawing-room; but being contrived "a double debt to pay," it
is also, and more justly, termed the library, for it happens that books
are the only article of property in which I am richer than my neighbours.
Of these I have about five thousand, collected gradually since my
eighteenth year. Therefore, painter, put as many as you can into this
room. Make it populous with books, and, furthermore, paint me a good
fire, and furniture plain and modest, befitting the unpretending cottage
of a scholar. And near the fire paint me a tea-table, and (as it is
clear that no creature can come to see one such a stormy night) place
only two cups and saucers on the tea-tray; and, if you know how to paint
such a thing symbolically or otherwise, paint me an eternal
tea-pot--eternal _a parte ante_ and _a parte post_--for I usually drink
tea from eight o'clock at night to four o'clock in the morning. And as
it is very unpleasant to make tea or to pour it out for oneself, paint me
a lovely young woman sitting at the table. Paint her arms like Aurora's
and her smiles like Hebe's. But no, dear M., not even in jest let me
insinuate that thy power to illuminate my cottage rests upon a tenure so
perishable as mere personal beauty, or that the witchcraft of angelic
smiles lies within the empire of any earthly pencil. Pass then, my good
painter, to something more within its power; and the next article brought
forward should natural