A TPtOT, AXD A DINNER PARTY. 75 



cratic to know common lawyers, or authors, or physi- 

 cians — as you would suppose us to be. But enough 

 of this for the present at least. Let us go dress ; and 

 then at least if you don't admire the noble men, I'll 

 make a bet of it I show you something to admire in 

 the noble women of England, two of the very loveliest 

 of whom you will meet to-night." 



Half an hour sufficed for the appareling in all due 

 form of our friends for the dinner party, and a drive 

 of ten minutes or more in a Russian phaeton brought 

 them to Cheshire's hunting quarters ; and nothing, 

 perhaps, that he had yet seen, so much moved Fair- 

 fax's admiration of the thoroughness of English system, 

 as the furnitui-e, the inhabitableness, the keeping, tout 

 ensemble, and the complete domestic air of this, a mere 

 hunting-box for three or four months of the season, 

 which in all respects resembled the permanent abode 

 and accustomed residence of some rich proprietor. It 

 was small, indeed, but every part was unexceptionably 

 perfect ; the ladies' drawing-rooms full of bijouterie 

 and trinkets, of feminine work and feminine accom- 

 plishments, redolent of those delicate sounds, sights, 

 accompaniments, and odors, which ever announce and 

 accompany the presence of high-bred, refined and ac- 

 complished women — the other rooms replete with 

 every thing that could be possibly desu-ed, yet showing 

 no superfluity of any thing, not only attracted his at- 

 tention and pleased his fancy, but elicited from him 

 some self-admitted satisfaction with that standard Eng- 

 lish principle of doing every thing that it is worth the 

 while to do at all, as well as it possibly can be done, 

 and in one place as well as another. 



When the ladies, too, made their appearance, he 

 could not but admit the truth of Matuschevitz's boast 

 that he would show him two of the loveliest women he 

 had ever looked upon, and neither while he gazed upon 

 their charms, and laughed and talked merry and soft 



