I have an almost feminine partiality for old a. When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the a-closet, a for the picture gallery. I ot defend the order of preference, but by saying, that we have all some taste or other, of too a a date to admit of our remembering distinctly that it was an acquired one. I call to mind the first play, and the first exhibition, that I was taken to; but I am not scious of a time when a jars and saucers were introduced into my imagination.
I had nhen -- why should I now have? -- to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that uhe notion of men and women, float about, uncircumscribed by any element, in that world before perspectives -- a a tea-cup.
I like to see my old friends -- whom distance ot diminish -- figuring up in the air (so they appear to our optics) yet on terra firma still -- so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue, which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, has made t up beh their sandals.
I love the men with womens faces, and the women, if possible, with still more womanish expressions.
Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handio a lady from a salver -- two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect! Ahe same lady, or another -- for likeness is identity on teacups -- is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored oher side of this calm garden river, with a dainty ming foot, whi a right angle of ince (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the midst of a flowery mead -- a furlong off oher side of the same straream!
Farther on -- if far or near he predicated of their world -- see horses, trees, pagodas, dang the hays.
Here -- a cow and rabbit cout, and co-extensive -- so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fihay.
I ointing out to my cousin last evening, over our Hyson (which we are old fashioned enough to drink uill of an afternoon) some of these speiracula upon a set of extra-ordinary old blue a (a ret purchase) which we were now for the first time using; and could not help remarking, how favourable circumstances had been to us of late years, that we could afford to please the eye sometimes with trifles of this sort -- when a passiiment seemed to over-shade the brows of my panion. I am quick at deteg these summer clouds in Bridget.
"I wish the good old times would e again," she said, "when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean, that I want to be poor; but there was a middle state " -- so she leased to ramble on, -- "in which I am sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now that you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, O! how much ado I had to get you to sent in those times!) we were used to have a debate two or three days before, and to weigh the for and against, and think what we might spare it out of, and what saving we could hit upon, that should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, when we felt the mohat we paid or it.
"Do you remember the brown suit, whiade to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so thread-bare -- and all because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which yed home late at night from Barkers in t-garden? Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not e to a determination till it was en oclock of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islingto