"At Fort Ridley you find tight cottages, whole fences, trim gardens, clean walks, and warm welcome. You hear no cant about a radical reform; but you see progressive and constant improvement. Your ears are not assailed by cataracts of fine words, but your heart acknowledges a continued flow of kindness and good humour. You encounter no tirades about liberty and equality, but you find all happy in their _own places_. Parents walking hand-in-hand, sustaining each other's authority, not struggling for their own: children respectful and affectionate: servants orderly and comfortable: the poor protected: the unhappy consoled. Mrs. Fitzroy, I only say, give me one Ridley, man, woman, or child, and I will joyfully contract to let you have as many Fitzallans as you can steam away from us in your packet. Take an old man's assurance, that there is little _reality_, whenever you find much _shew_. Good wine (the proverb says) needs no bush; and when people _do_, they need not _talk_. Things tell their own stories. "Be not solitary, be not idle," is the conclusion of Johnson's beautiful fiction on the Search after Happiness; and Voltaire, the very opposite of our great moralist in all but the possession of superior talent, finishes his disgusting, but witty, _Candide_, with words to the same effect, '_Il faut cultiver le jardin_.'" "You always set your face against whatever I approve," said Mrs. Fitzroy; "but Mr. Fitzallan seems _quite_ a practical man," added she, "and that is the reason that I like him. All his principles are pure; and, judging by what I have seen, I should say they are reduced to daily exercise, else how should he know so much of the Irish peasantry, or be able to relate so many interesting anecdotes respecting them?"--"Why, madam," replied old Bentley, "you might as well argue to the original humour of a man who had learned Joe Miller by heart. Mr. Fitzallan studies stage effect, and has tragedy as well as comedy at his fingers' ends. An Irish story, well purged from its yellow clay, and dressed to advantage, is a nice morsel, even in the heart of London, if you do not stuff your friends with too much of a good thing; and the gentleman of whom we are speaking knows exactly how much pudding will choke a dog."