N.P. WILLIS.

_OFF-HAND SKETCHES_.

Since my friend Morris joined me, we've been as busy as Wall street
brokers in a gold panic--eyes and ears, and every sense filled with the
novel sights and sounds that greet us on every side in this most
delightful, charming, incomparably beautiful summer land.

Whom have we not seen, from Napoleon down to the last suicide?

I have a memorandum which would reach from here to Idlewild, filled with
the names of notables and celebrities, whom I have met in the short space
of a year.

We do matters quickly here, among the celestials. I used to think life
sped fast in the great cities of London, Paris, and New York, but we live
faster here. With every means of travelling which human ingenuity can
invent--flying machines, balloons, the will and the magnet--we fairly
outdo thought and light, which you consider emblems of rapidity on earth.

Morris and I made a point of visiting Byron, Moore, Hunt, Scott, and that
clique. You must bear in mind that we do not all live on one point of
space _here_; among so many thousand million, billion, trillion,
quadrillion, sextillion, and countless illions, there must be some
persons who are further apart than Morris and I, who are side by side!

It is a peculiarity which you Yankees seldom think of, that Englishmen
can't endure to live in America. Well, that peculiarity is just as active
after they "shuffle off the mortal coil." They must have their little
England, even in the spirit world.

So I telegraphed to that quarter of the celestial planet that two
strangers from the great emporium of intellect, and civilization, New
York City, were about to visit that locality. We so arranged our journey
as to arrive about a day after the dispatch had reached them.

It was proposed that we should meet at the beautiful villa belonging to
the Countess of Blessington.

I can assure you that on arriving there it was with a slightly
palpitating heart I ascended the noble steps of her residence. The
Countess met us graciously, and by her vivacity and charming candor
dispelled the feeling of modest diffidence as to our merits, naturally
awakened by the thought of being presented to those illustrious persons
who so long held sway over English literature.

Ere we were aware, we were ushered into the midst of a hilarious group of
authors, who welcomed us in a most cordial manner.

I did not need to have them introduced to me by name, as I recognized
e