During dinner nothing was talked of but the merits of a Richmond party:--"there is surely nothing in the world more beautiful," said Mr. Newcomb, "than the view of Richmond Hill; it is the only _riante_ landscape in England; a perfect Claude; and for my part, I never desire to go farther in quest of the picturesque--it is quite a _gentle_ scene; no horrors, no rugged rocks or torrents; but a sweet, soft, sylvan composition." "Enlivened too," observed Sir William Temple, "by stage-coaches, and mail-coaches, and coaches of all sorts, in short; without which I hold all views to be very wearisome things _à la longue_." "Only made for the eyes of the vulgar, depend upon it," was Lord Baskerville's observation. "Except during the hunting season, the country is hateful; but one may bear a row to Richmond, especially in such company,"--and he bowed to Comtesse Leinsengen. "The country is all very well," she rejoined, "in a _grande chateau bien remplie de tout ce qu'il y a de mieux en fait de société_; but it makes me shudder to think of being in one of your provinces, in a house in the middle of a shut-up park, with a neighbour or two _pour tout bien_; no no, I am perished with _ennui_ but to think of it." "It makes me shudder too," said Lady Baskerville, smiling at the Comtesse Leinsengen's broken English; "but, in fact, it is what nobody does now-a-days; either the real or the pretended incapacity on the score of fortune for living at the country-seats, as they used to be called, gets rid of all that sort of thing. People live very much now as they used to do in France, I am told, when Paris was the only place in that country which any body lived in." "Yes," said Mr. Spencer Newcomb, "and as long as the people don't find out that their landlords forsake them, and rack them for their money, which they spend any where rather than in doing them any good, it is very agreeable not to be bored with that sort of useful virtuous life. Long may they continue to administer to our pleasures--they ought certainly to be made for nothing else; but, unfortunately, there came a time in France when these things were all changed, and the vulgars took it into their heads that they were to have their day; and off went heads, and on went caps of liberty, and all things were turned upside down, as every body knows. I wonder now how Lord Baskerville would like to turn groom, and rub down his own horses!" "Ha! ha! ha!" was echoed around.