A naturalist's drawing-room. 45 



and some of tlie parishioners apt to skulk out of siglit. 

 During the pleasant hour of breakfast, and the cigar which 

 followed, I contemplated my treasures with a placid eye. 

 Picture to yourself a large and airy room, made. out of two, 

 in an eleo-ant villa : on the sideboard stand four or five 

 glass vases, various in size and in contents ; from this the 

 eye travels to a table, opposite the window which opens on 

 a balcony sheltered by a verandah ; this table is covered 

 with bottles, phials, troughs, microscope, dissectiug-case, 

 note-book, &c., all in that state of imperfect order deno- 

 minated higgledy-piggledy. Three soup-plates occupy the 

 extreme end of the table, and, " carry the eye " into the 

 balcony, where three yellow earthenware pans, and a white 

 foot-pan mimic, tant hien que mat, the shallow rock-pools of 

 the shore. If the eye so carried into the balcony happen to 

 be in the least a conventional eye — one never so well pleased 

 as when restino- on the elegancies of surface civilisation — it 

 is possible, nay, it is extremely probable, that it will rest 

 upon these pans with a very mitigated admiration. Even I 

 will confess they are not strictly ornamental. Without hav- 

 ing read " Price on the Picturesque," one may be startled, 

 on walking up an elegant garden to an elegant villa, if the 

 eye falls upon yellow pie-dishes and white foot-pans sym- 

 metrically insolent under a verandah. As to Gillow of 

 Oxford Street, be sure he would feel his hair turning grey 

 at such a sight. And I know many persons of irreproach- 

 able drawing-rooms, liberal in opinions, affable in demeanour, 

 and glad to own me among their visiting acquaintances, who 

 would cut me at once after seeing the proprieties thus out- 



