how far is his residence from the exhibitions and the shops. His trees are black, his roses cankered, and his soul imbittered by the defalcations of friends, the blunders and extortions of cabmen, and his own infructuous effort to be always in two places at once. Nor is the second and, apparently, more facile resource of the tired Londoner—that of quartering himself on his kind country friends for his holidays—very much more successful. The country would indeed be delightful for our Christmas fortnight or our Easter or Whitsuntide week, if we were permitted to enjoy in it that repose we so urgently need and so fondly seek. We are quite enamoured, when we first turn our steps from the smoky city, with the trees and fields; and we enjoy indescribably our rides and drives and walks, the varied aspects of nature, and the beasts and birds wherewith we are surrounded. But one thing we have not bargained for, and that is—country Society. Of course we love our friends and relations in whose homes we are received with kindness and affection, whom we know to be the salt of the earth for goodness, and who love us enough to feel an interest even in our towniest gossip. But _their_ country friends, the neighboring gentlefolk, the clergyman’s wife, the family doctor, the people who are invariably invited to meet us at the long formal country dinner! This is the trial beneath which our new-found love of rural life is apt to succumb. Sir Cornewall Lewis’s too famous _dictum_ returns, slightly modified, to our memories—As “life would be tolerable but for its pleasures,” so the country would be enchanting, were it not for its society. Could we be allowed to live in the country, and see only our hosts, we should be as happy as kings and queens. But to fly, for the sake of rest and quiet, from the tables where we might have met some of the most brilliant men and women of the day, and then to find that we shall incur the disgrace of being unsociable curmudgeons if we object to spend the afternoon in playing tennis with the rector’s stupid daughters, and to dine afterwards at the house of a particularly dull and vulgar neighbor with whom we would fain avoid such acquaintance as may justify him in visiting us in town, this is surely an evil destiny! When, alas! will all the good and kind people who invite town friends to come and rest with them in the country forbear to make their acceptance the occasion for a round of rural dissipation, and believe that their weary brother would be only too glad, did civility permit, to inscribe on the door of his bedroom during his sojourn the affecting Italian epitaph, _Implora pace!_ The Country Mouse has naturally said as little as possible of the drawbacks of his favorite mode of existence,—metaphorically speaking, the dampness of his “Hollow Tree,” and its liability to be infested by Owls. It may be well to jot off a few of the less recognized offsets to the pleasures of rural life before listening to any eulogies thereof.