"Nay, nothing that is out of rule ought to strike one, in a country where imitation governs in all things immaterial, and originality unsettles all things sacred and dear." "By way of punishment for that bold speech, I wish I had left the old rookery in the state I found it, that its beauties might have greeted your eyes, instead of this uncouth pile, which seems so much to offend them. Mademoiselle Viefville, permit me to ask how you like that house?" "_Mais, c'est un petit chateau_" "_Un château, Effinghamisé,_" said Eve, laughing. "_Effinghamisé si vous voulez, ma chère; pourtant c'est un château_." "The general opinion in this part of the country is," said Aristabulus, "that Mr. John Effingham has altered the building on the plan of some edifice of Europe, though I forget the name of the particular temple; it is not, however, the Parthenon, nor the temple of Minerva." "I hope, at least," said Mr. Effingham, leading the way up a little lawn, "it will not turn out to be the Temple of the Winds." Chapter XI. "Nay, I'll come; if I lose a scruple of this sport, let me be oiled to death with melancholy."--SHAKSPEARE. The progress of society in America, has been distinguished by several peculiarities that do not so properly belong to the more regular and methodical advances of civilization in other parts of the world. On the one hand, the arts of life, like Minerva, who was struck out of the intellectual being of her father at a blow, have started full- grown into existence, as the legitimate inheritance of the colonists, while, on the other, every thing tends towards settling down into a medium, as regards quality, a consequence of the community-character of the institutions. Every thing she had seen that day, had struck Eve as partaking of this mixed nature, in which, while nothing was vulgar, little even approached to that high standard, that her European education had taught her to esteem perfect. In the Wigwam, however, as her father's cousin had seen fit to name the family dwelling, there was more of keeping, and a closer attention to the many little things she had been accustomed to consider essential to comfort and elegance, and she was better satisfied with her future home, than with most she had seen since her return to America.