They now arrived at the elms and the fir-tree, which the peasant had pointed out as the landmarks of the dwelling of Desmond. They were surprised to see a very pretty cottage, standing in the midst of a luxuriant garden, one part of which sloped down to the edge of the lake. Everything bore the air of comfort and competence. They almost doubted if the peasant had been correct in his information. Three rosy children, plainly but neatly dressed, were sitting on the edge of the shallow water, watching with intense delight and interest the manœuvres of a paper flotilla, which they had committed to the mercy of the waves. _Mr. Fax._ What is the difference between these children and Xerxes on the shores of Salamis? _Mr. Forester._ None, but that where they have pure and unmingled pleasure, his feelings began in selfish pride, and ended in slavish fear; their amusement is natural and innocent; his was unnatural, cruel, and destructive, and therefore more unworthy of a rational being. _Better is a poor and wise child than a foolish king that will not be admonished._ A female came from the cottage. Mr. Fax recognised Mrs. Desmond. He was surprised at the change in her appearance. Health and content animated her countenance. The simple neatness of her dress derived an appearance of elegance from its interesting wearer; contrary to the fashionable process, in which dress neither neat nor simple, but a heterogeneous mixture of all the fripperies of Europe, gives what the world calls elegance, where less partial nature has denied it. There are, in this respect, two classes of human beings: Nature makes the first herself, for the beauty of her own creation; her journeymen cut out the second for tailors and mantua-makers to finish. The first, when apparelled, may be called dressed people—the second, peopled dresses; the first bear the same relation to their clothes as an oak bears to its foliage—the second, the same as a wig-block bears to a wig; the first may be compared to cocoa-nuts, in which the kernel is more valuable than the shell—the second, to some varieties of the _Testaceous Mollusca_, where a shell of infinite value covers a stupid fish that is good for nothing.