It is true that the constant use of this sentence savours somewhat of a false French taste, which I hope never to see engrafted upon our true English feeling. But in this particular who will not excuse this imitation of our refined neighbours? Who will so far give up the enviable privilege of making his house his castle, as to throw open the gates upon the first summons of inquisitive impertinence or fashionable intrusion? The “morning calls” of the dun and the dandy, the belle and the bailiff, the poet and the petitioner, appear to us a species of open hostility carried on against our comfort and tranquillity; and, as all stratagems are fair in war, we find no fault with the ingenious device which fortifies us against these insidious attacks. While I was engaged in this mental soliloquy, a carriage drove up to Lady Mortimer’s door, and a footman in a most appallingly splendid livery roused me from a reverie by a thundering knock. “Not at Home!” was the result of the application. Half a dozen cards were thrust from the window; and, after due inquiries after her ladyship’s cold, and her ladyship’s husband’s cold, and her ladyship’s lap-dog’s cold, the carriage resumed its course, and so did my cogitations. “What,” said I to myself, “would have been the visitor’s perplexity, if this brief formula were not in use?” She must have got out of her carriage; an exertion which would ill accord with the _vis inertiæ_[4] (excuse Latin in a schoolboy) of a lady, or she must have given up her intention of leaving her card at a dozen houses to which she is now hastening, or she must have gone to dinner even later than fashionable punctuality requires! Equally annoying would the visit have proved to the lady of the house. She might have been obliged to throw “The Abbot” into the drawer, or to call the children from the nursery. Is she taciturn? She might have been compelled to converse. Is she talkative? She might have been compelled to hold her tongue: or, in all probability, she sees her friends to-night, and it would be hard indeed if she were not allowed to be “Not at Home” till ten at night, when from that time she must be “At Home” till three in the morning.