Sir George was certainly on the point of forming a very erroneous judgment concerning the country, when Mr. Effingham extricated him from this set, and introduced him properly into his own. Here, indeed, while there was much to strike a European as peculiar, and even provincial, the young baronet fared much better. He met with the same quality of table, relieved by an intelligence that was always respectable, and a manliness of tone which, if not unmixed, had the great merit of a simplicity and nature that are not always found in more sophisticated circles. The occasional incongruities struck them all, more than the positive general faults and Sir George Templemore did justice to the truth, by admitting frankly, the danger he had been in of forming a too hasty opinion. All this time, which occupied a month, the young baronet got to be more and more intimate in Hudson Square, Eve gradually becoming more frank and unreserved with him, as she grew sensible that he had abandoned his hopes of success with herself, and Grace gradually more cautious and timid, as she became conscious of his power to please, and the interest he took in herself. It might have been three days after the ball at Mrs. Houston's that most of the family was engaged to look in on a Mrs. Legend, a lady of what was called a literary turn, Sir George having been asked to make one of their party. Aristabulus was already returned to his duty in the country, where we shall shortly have occasion to join him, but an invitation had been sent to Mr. Truck, under the general, erroneous impression of his real character. Taste, whether in the arts, literature, or any thing else, is a natural impulse, like love. It is true both may be cultivated and heightened by circumstances, but the impulses must be voluntary, and the flow of feeling, or of soul, as it has become a law to style it, is not to be forced, or commanded to come and go at will. This is the reason that all premeditated enjoyments connected with the intellect, are apt to baffle expectations, and why academies, literary clubs, coteries and dinners are commonly dull. It is true that a body of clever people may be brought together, and, if left to their own impulses, the characters of their mind will show themselves; wit will flash, and thought will answer thought spontaneously; but every effort to make the stupid agreeable, by giving a direction of a pretending intellectual nature to their efforts, is only rendering dullness more conspicuous by exhibiting it in contrast with what it ought to be to be clever, as a bad picture is rendered the more conspicuous by an elaborate and gorgeous frame.