have relinquished social intercourse on account of
disappointed affection, mortified vanity, or mistaken devotion.

"What a beau ideal of earthly felicity springs up to the imagination
in taking a glance at the beautiful cottage of Llangollen! all the
every-day vexations and vulgar cares of life, seem there swept aside,
and nothing left for the inhabitants but to lead a life of graceful
leisure, tying up carnations, engrafting roses, gazing at the
splendid scenery around, and talking in perpetual ecstacies about
flowers and perfumes. Almost every grown-up person entertains, at
the out-set of life, notions of happiness with a cottage nearly
similar to that which a little girl enjoys with her first
doll,--dressing it up, altering, arranging, painting, and spoiling
it; but this hermitage really is a singular looking toy. The
building is long and low, so completely cased in richly-carved oak,
that it might be mistaken for an enormous wardrobe. The garden
slopes upwards from the river Dee, and is greatly embellished by a
splendid beech hedge about forty feet high; several charming little
summer houses are sprinkled about the grounds; and in one most
romantic arbour, overlooking the fine cascade, we found a volume
lying open on the seat, which proved to be Southey's Roderick;
suitable reading for such a scene of poetical beauty.

"An attempt at embellishment has been made, by placing a stuffed bear
near the house, probably in imitation of the Zoological Gardens; but
the idea is rather a failure, and would appear more suitable over the
door of a perfumer's shop, to intimate the presence of bear's grease.
A little gim-crack model of a wooden house is also visible, by way of
an ornament, stuck on the summit of a wooden pillar, but the effect
is disproportioned to all surrounding objects, even more than the
designs on Chinese paper; where men of six feet high are represented
entering mansions half their own height, and birds may be seen flying
larger than either the houses or their inhabitants. In a cottage
built of oak and roofed with thatch, it would be very desirable that
the inhabitants should have some taste for the study of entomology,
as they might find an inexhaustible hunting-field among the wooden
walls and creepers. It has been disputed whether more inconvenience
is endured f