Here Mrs. West and Mrs. Hunt used to sit talking of old times and Philadelphia. West never made his appearance, except at dinner and tea-time, retiring again to his painting-room directly afterward; but used to contrive to mystify the embryo poet with some such question as, "Who was the father of Zebedee's children?" "The talk," he says, "was quiet; the neighborhood quiet; the servants quiet; I thought the very squirrel in the cage would have made a greater noise anywhere else. James the porter, a fine athletic fellow, who figured in his master's pictures as an apostle, was as quiet as he was strong. Even the butler, with his little twinkling eyes, full of pleasant conceit, vented his notions of himself in half-tones and whispers." The house of the Thorntons was a different one, and a more socially attractive place. "There was quiet in the one; there were beautiful statues and pictures; and there was my Angelica for me, with her intent eyes at the fireside. But, beside quiet in the other, there was cordiality, and there was music, and a family brimful of hospitality and good-nature; and dear Almeria T., now Mrs. P----e, who in vain pretends that she is growing old. These were indeed holydays on which I used to go to Austin Friars. The house, according to my boyish recollections, was of the description I have been ever fondest of; large, rambling, old-fashioned, solidly built; resembling the mansions about Highgate and other old villages. It was furnished as became the house of a rich merchant and a sensible man, the comfort predominating over the costliness. At the back was a garden with a lawn; and a private door opened into another garden, belonging to the Company of Drapers; so that, what with the secluded nature of the street itself, and these verdant places behind it, it was truly _rus in urbe_, and a retreat. When I turned down the archway, I held my mother's hand tighter with pleasure, and was full of expectation, and joy, and respect. My first delight was in mounting the stair-case to the rooms of the young ladies, setting my eyes on the comely and sparkling face of my fair friend, with her romantic name, and turning over, for the hundredth time, the books in her library." The whole description of this charming and cordial family, is one of those beautiful and sunny scenes in human life, to which the heart never wearies of turning. It makes the rememberer exclaim:--"Blessed house! May a blessing be upon your rooms, and your lawn, and your neighboring garden, and the quiet, old monastic name of your street; and may it never be a thoroughfare; and may all your inmates be happy! Would to God one could renew, at a moment's notice, the happy hours we have enjoyed in past times, with the same circles, in the same houses!" But a wealthy aunt, with handsome daughters, came from the West Indies, and Great Ormond-street, and afterward Merton, in Surrey, where this aunt went to live, became a new and happy resort for him.