from, and the tugs at my heart respectively administered by
Francine's cap-strings and Mary Ashburton's shadowy tresses. Berkley,
diplomatically approving the landscape before us, would not get angry,
would not be insulted, and offered no prise to my difficult temper.

"Tell me now, Sylvester," said I after a few minutes' silence. "You
are young, yet you have seen the world. What is the best refuge, in
your view, for a man of delicate sentiments and of ripe age? Would you
recommend such a person to shut himself up for ever in a hermitage
of musty books, and to flirt there eternally with the memories of his
young loves, who are become corpulent matrons or angular maids? Or,
don't you think, now, that an autumnal attachment--provided some sweet
and healthy intelligence comes in contact with his own--is a capital
thing in its way? The crackling fireside instead of the lovers'
walk? The perfection of rational comfort subservient to, rather than
dominating, his early dreams? Respectful affection, fidelity and
fondest care as the conditions surrounding one's character, and
upholding it in its best symmetry? Cannot the poet think better if his
body is kept snug? Cannot the man of feeling remember better if his
slippers are toasted and his buttons sewed? In fact, is not
one's faith to a beloved ideal best shown by acquiring a fresh
standing-point to see it from?"

"No doubt Hamlet's mother thought so," said Sylvester rather brutally,
"and married King Claudius solely to brighten her ideal of her first
husband." A more appropriate remark, it seemed to me, might have
been found to chime in with my speculations. "But here," pursued
the statesman, compromisingly, "are old memories protected by modern
conveniences. Here is the 'Repose of Sophie.'"