doors were opposite to each other, and were composed of two heavy tall
wings, and opened in the middle, moving on brass grooves inserted into
the floor--they would not have opened over a carpet. There were two
windows reaching up nearly to the ceiling, but very narrow and with deep
window-seats in the thickness of the wall. The room was full of scent,
partly from the flowers outside, and partly from the great jars of pot-
pourri inside. The choice of odours was what my lady piqued herself
upon, saying nothing showed birth like a keen susceptibility of smell. We
never named musk in her presence, her antipathy to it was so well
understood through the household: her opinion on the subject was believed
to be, that no scent derived from an animal could ever be of a
sufficiently pure nature to give pleasure to any person of good family,
where, of course, the delicate perception of the senses had been
cultivated for generations. She would instance the way in which
sportsmen preserve the breed of dogs who have shown keen scent; and how
such gifts descend for generations amongst animals, who cannot be
supposed to have anything of ancestral pride, or hereditary fancies about
them. Musk, then, was never mentioned at Hanbury Court. No more were
bergamot or southern-wood, although vegetable in their nature. She
considered these two latter as betraying a vulgar taste in the person who
chose to gather or wear them. She was sorry to notice sprigs of them in
the button-hole of any young man in whom she took an interest, either
because he was engaged to a servant of hers or otherwise, as he came out
of church on a Sunday afternoon. She was afraid that he liked coarse
pleasures; and I am not sure if she did not think that his preference for
these coarse sweetnesses did not imply a probability that he would take
to drinking. But she distinguished between vulgar and common. Violets,
pinks, and sweetbriar were common enough; roses and mignionette, for
those who had gardens, honeysuckle for those who walked along the bowery
lanes; but wearing them betrayed no vulgarity of taste: the queen upon