"Caroline," said Sir John, "these painted ruins afford a good lesson for us. We must desire our rich uncles and our generous god-mothers to make an alteration in their presents, if they can not be prevailed upon to withhold them." "It is a sad mistake," said Mr. Stanley, "to suppose that youth wants to be so incessantly amused. They want not pleasures to be chalked out for them. Lay a few cheap and coarse materials in their way, and let their own busy inventions be suffered to work. They have abundant pleasure in the mere freshness and novelty of life, its unbroken health, its elastic spirit, its versatile temper, and its ever new resources." "So it appears, Stanley," said Sir John, "when I look at your little group of girls, recluses as they are called. How many cheap, yet lively pleasures do they enjoy! their successive occupations, their books, their animating exercise, their charitable rounds, their ardent friendships; the social table, at which the elder ones are companions, not mutes; the ever-varying pleasures of their garden, "Increasing virtue, and approving heaven." While we were sitting with Lady Aston, on whom we next called, Mr. Stanley suddenly exclaimed, "The Misses Flam are coming up the gravel walk." Lady Aston looked vexed, but correcting herself said, "Mr. Stanley, we owe this visit to you, or rather to your friend," bowing to me; "they saw your carriage stop here, or they would not have done so dull a thing as to have called on me." These new guests presented a new scene, very uncongenial to the timid and tranquil spirit of the amiable hostess. There seemed to be a contest between the sisters, who should be most eloquent, most loud, or most inquisitive. They eagerly attacked me all at once, as supposing me to be overflowing with intelligence from the metropolis, a place which they not only believed to contain exclusively all that was worth seeing, but all that was worth hearing. The rest of the world they considered as a barren wilderness, of which the hungry inhabitants could only be kept from starving, by such meagre aliment as the occasional reports of its pleasures, fashions, and anecdotes, which might now and then be conveyed by some stray traveler, might furnish. "It is so strange to us," said Miss Bell, "and so monstrously dull and vulgar, to be in the country at this time of the year, that we don't know what to do with ourselves." "As to the time of year, madam," said I, "if ever one would wish to be in the country at all, surely this month is the point of perfection. The only immoral thing with which I could ever charge our excellent sovereign is, that he was born in June, and has thus furnished his fashionable subjects with a loyal pretense for encountering 'the sin and sea-coal of London,' to borrow Will Honeycomb's phrase, in the finest month of the twelve. But where that is the real motive with one, it is the pretense of a thousand."