Even in the best furnished houses, in Aladdin's palace itself, new-comers always discover some deficiency; and a few things were wanting in this to complete our felicity;--but Fate, which had frowned from every sign-board on us for a long time, was now determined to make up for her bad behaviour, and at that moment put into our hands a catalogue of household goods to be sold the very next day, a few miles off, at Oakfield Lodge. The one-horse car was again put in requisition, and our hostess--the kindest of women--accompanied us to the sale, and by nodding at intervals to the auctioneer, procured all the articles required. A sale is always a melancholy event. A house looks so miserable with all its carpets and chairs and tables piled in useless heaps--the beds dismantled--and the rooms filled with a staring crowd, handling every thing, and passing its vulgar judgment upon curtains and drapery that the proprietor perhaps thought finer than those of a Grecian statue--on pier-glasses which had reflected shapes of love or beauty--on the polish of mahogany that had been set in a roar with wit,--a low, mean, savage-hearted crowd, bent on making bargains, and caring nothing for the associations that make commonest furniture more valuable than cedar and ebony. The auction on this occasion lasted nearly a week; and day after day the whole population of the neighbourhood streamed to it like a fair. It was a handsome house, and the arrangement of the rooms spoke audibly of taste and comfort. Selling the things that agreed together so well, to go into separate situations--the library table to one town--the library chairs to another--seemed very like selling a family of slaves to different masters; so, after a cursory glance at the dwelling, we betook ourselves in solitary rumination to the banks of the river. And a quiet, steady, calm, respectable kind of river the Usk is--not of the high aristocratic appearance of the Wye, with wild outbursts of youthful petulance softened immediately into grace and elegance--but a sedate individual, like a retired citizen, well to do in the world, and glad to jog on as uninterruptedly as he can. The grounds of Oakfield slope down to the water--and beautiful grounds they are--a line of rich meadows, shaded with stately trees, and divided into numerous portions by invisible wires, stretches for several miles along the banks; and the abrupt elevation, bounding this level sweep of grass and stream, affords an admirable site for two or three of the moderate-sized and tasteful villas that seem the characteristics of this vicinity. On pursuing our way through field and fell towards the suspension bridge over the river, we saw, emerging from a wood, a figure that Isaac Walton would have adopted immediately for his son and heir. He was a good-looking young man, but so piscatorially habilimented that there was no making out his order or degree from his external sophistications. Round his hat were twined spare lines; on