In big cities like Paris and Rome there is another class of the expatriated, the wealthy who have left their homes in a moment of pique after the failure of some social or political ambition; and who find in these centres the recognition refused them at home and for which their souls thirsted. It is not to these I refer, although it is curious to see a group of people living for years in a country of which they, half the time, do not speak the language (beyond the necessities of housekeeping and shopping), knowing but few of its inhabitants, and seeing none of the society of the place, their acquaintance rarely going beyond that equivocal, hybrid class that surrounds rich "strangers" and hangs on to the outer edge of the _grand monde_. One feels for this latter class merely contempt, but one's pity is reserved for the former. What object lessons some lives on the Continent would be to impatient souls at home, who feel discontented with their surroundings, and anxious to break away and wander abroad! Let them think twice before they cut the thousand ties it has taken a lifetime to form. Better monotony at your own fireside, my friends, where at the worst, you are known and have your place, no matter how small, than an old age among strangers. No. 12--"Seven Ages" of Furniture The progress through life of active-minded Americans is apt to be a series of transformations. At each succeeding phase of mental development, an old skin drops from their growing intelligence, and they assimilate the ideas and tastes of their new condition, with a facility and completeness unknown to other nations. One series of metamorphoses particularly amusing to watch is, that of an observant, receptive daughter of Uncle Sam who, aided and followed (at a distance) by an adoring husband, gradually develops her excellent brain, and rises through fathoms of self-culture and purblind experiment, to the surface of dilettantism and connoisseurship. One can generally detect the exact stage of evolution such a lady has reached by the bent of her conversation, the books she is reading, and, last but not least, by her material surroundings; no outward and visible signs reflecting inward and spiritual grace so clearly as the objects people collect around them for the adornment of their rooms, or the way in which those rooms are decorated.