I love the men with women's faces, and women, if possible, with still
more womanish expressions.

Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a
salver--two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect! And
here the same lady, or another--for likeness is identity on tea-cups--is
stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this
calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right angle
of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the
midst of a flowery mead--a furlong off on the other side of the same
strange stream!

Further on--if far or near can be predicated of their world--see horses,
trees, pagodas, dancing the hays.[5]

Here--a cow and rabbit couchant, and coextensive--so objects show, seen
through the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay.

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our Hyson (which we
are old-fashioned enough to drink unmixed still of an afternoon), some
of these _speciosa miracula_[6] upon a set of extraordinary old blue
china (a recent purchase) which we were now for the first time using;
and could not help remarking, how favourable circumstances had been to
us of late years, that we could afford to please the eye sometimes with
trifles of this sort--when a passing sentiment seemed to overshade the
brows of my companion. I am quick at detecting these summer clouds in
Bridget.

"I wish the good old times would come again," she said, "when we were