assembled several of the families residing in the more immediate
neighbourhood, and who sociably dropped in to chat around the national
tea-table, play a rubber at whist, or make up, by the help of two or
three children and two or three grandpapas, a merry country-dance; for in
that happy day people were much more sociable than they are now in the
houses of our rural Thanes. Our country seats became bustling and
animated after the Birthday; many even of the more important families
resided, indeed, all the year round on their estates. The Continent was
closed to us; the fastidious exclusiveness which comes from habitual
residence in cities had not made that demarcation, in castes and in talk,
between neighbour and neighbour, which exists now. Our squires were less
educated, less refined, but more hospitable and unassuming. In a word,
there was what does not exist now, except in some districts remote from
London,--a rural society for those who sought it.

The party, as we enter, is grouped somewhat thus. But first we must cast
a glance at the room itself, which rarely failed to be the first object
to attract a stranger's notice. It was a long, and not particularly
well-proportioned apartment,--according, at least, to modern notions,--
for it had rather the appearance of two rooms thrown into one. At the
distance of about thirty-five feet, the walls, before somewhat narrow,
were met by an arch, supported by carved pilasters, which opened into a
space nearly double the width of the previous part of the room, with a
domed ceiling and an embayed window of such depth that the recess almost
formed a chamber in itself. But both these divisions of the apartment
corresponded exactly in point of decoration,--they had the same small
panelling, painted a very light green, which seemed almost white by
candlelight, each compartment wrought with an arabesque; the same
enriched frieze and cornice; they had the same high mantelpieces,
ascending to the ceiling, with the arms of St. John in bold relief. They