We are too heavily weighted, our social intercourse is too complicated, too much clogged with ceremony, to move easily; and where our highest faculties should be allowed full play, we find so much hard work and consequent fatigue, that we look upon every dinner and evening party in the light of an uphill road with a difficult team to drive. We all know and applaud the French manner of visiting. Receiving friends on a stated day of the week, simply enjoying their society, and exerting the intellectual faculties instead of merely opening the purse for their entertainment. Why have we so seldom the courage to follow this example? It is because we fear to show less well to the eyes of our acquaintance if our own habits seem less expensive than theirs. A low purse-pride is at the bottom of it all. Our dress must be costly and perpetually changing, our servants and establishment must be displayed, if we are ourselves smothered beneath their weight. So we give up our precious daylight to morning calls, as we ridiculously call those visits of ceremony which are paid in the afternoon. These afford us no pleasure, while they are an infliction to the people called upon. Do not most of us know the feeling of relief that we have after paying a round of visits, when, on finding, as the day was fine, the greater number of our friends from home, we return with an empty card-case, and say, with the complacency of self-satisfied persons who have done their duty, "There, that is done and need not be done again for a month." Whereas we are sorry when even our slight acquaintances "regret they cannot accept" our invitations to an evening party, when we might enjoy their company, and they the society of each other, at the same time, and at a reasonable hour for enjoyment. Our "at homes" are on a radically wrong principle. We crowd our rooms, we insist on late hours and fullest dress, and our pleasure in consequence becomes a toil. But how agreeable is the easy evening gathering in a cheerful and early lighted drawing-room, where few or many welcome guests drop in, knowing it to be our "at home" day. Where we talk and sip tea, play and sing, or amuse ourselves, if clever, with paper games--capital promoters of laughter and whetstones to the wits--and go away as early as we please. All to be over by half-past ten, at any rate, in order not to interfere with early rising next morning. I have found nothing, not even guinea lessons from eminent masters, more conducive to family improvement in music than this way of enjoying society, since one is obliged to have a few new things always at one's fingers' ends ready to perform; and in homely little parties like these, young girls "not yet out" may pass many pleasant evenings under their mother's wing, with real advantage to themselves.