Still more, why are they unnecessarily to be warned of 66 'Hard unkindness' alter'd eye, That mocks the tear it forced to flow?' I pass the sad catalogue of miseries he would make these boys look at, amid their innocent pastimes; and only wish he had recollected his own maxim, when he wrote so discomfortably— Yet, ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late. No more-where ignorance is bliss, These considerations have often damped the pleasure I am otherwise, heart and soul, disposed to feel, whenever I see a play-field, and which make me wish those fine lines had never been written." Yours, at least," said I, " is the sunshine of the breast, and ought not to be disturbed. Meantime, forgetting prophecy till it be more necessary, let us rank this half hundred of boys where they ought to be,-high in the scale of the happy." 293 SECTION XII. "Let him shun castles. Safer shall he be 2nd Part, HENRY VI. In this little fit of moralizing, we pricked on towards Marlborough, where the magnificent inn and gardens, Willoughby said, "made him feel almost as proud as the proud Duke of Somerset, who built it for a mere lodging-house for himself in his way to town. How little," continued Willoughby, "did his Grace think he was building it for so graceless a fellow as I! But sic transit gloria;'-such glory, at least, as the Duke's was, who dealt largely in magnificence, if he did not in comfort." "Have a care," said I, "that you do not fall into that gross but common error (I must not add, into the bad taste,) which leads people to believe, what perhaps they wish,—that because they have no magnificence themselves, others that have, have no comfort. I, at least, have seen them so often combined, that I cannot help censuring that opinion." 66 Leaving my vagabond notions to themselves," replied Willoughby, "we are now coming up to a person who will read us a lecture upon that subject; at least, though most extensively connected with rich and great, and welcome enough among them, from his attainments and cultivation, he is remarkable for almost studiously shunning them, from a taste, growing more and more upon him, for living alone. I have only lately got acquainted with him in one of my tours, and at first thought it proceeded from some disgust; but he is no Jaques, and certainly does not love melancholy better than laughing; but he says it is all sheer selfishness.” At these words we came up to the gentleman, who was walking his horse (a handsome one at all points) leisurely along, and to whom Willoughby introduced me, by the name of Mr. Blythfield. He had a countenance marked by the most palpable combination of shrewdness and good-nature I had ever seen; seemed much at his ease in a large drab-coloured riding-coat, slashed at the sleeves, in a fashion at least forty years old; had a ruddy cheek, and a manner which, though thoroughly affable, and anything but proud, seemed to indicate that he had been chiefly used to the company of persons who looked up to him. "I suppose," said Willoughby, "you have been to pay your duty to your chief there (pointing to a Nobleman's mansion with spreading wings;) and, I trust, you are in better humour with it than you were at your last annual visit, when you had so many amusing distresses." "They were no amusement to me," returned our new companion, "and I regret that Lord Grandborough, who is really a worthy and enlightened man, should so give into our foolish manners, introduced by wealth, as to sacrifice so many comforts and independent hours as he might be master of, to the fashionable nothingness and annoyances in which he passes his time. He laughs at me, and calls me Cynic, because, being his near relation, I prefer my hollow tree' to his tall house near Lincoln's Inn.' He certainly does the honours of his consanguinity exceedingly well; has neither pride nor vapours, (though I am afraid his Lady has both); and were his house better built and furnished "Better built and furnished!" cried Willoughby, "this is rank treason, or at least blasphemy against all taste and virtu! Why, I went all over it the other day in a large company, who came from London on purpose; and I must say no show-house ever deserved its reputation so well." "It is a show-house, then!" said Mr. Blythfield. "To be sure! and very well worth seeing." "So much the better for you," continued Blythfield," and the worse for my Lord. He was out, of course, when all this company came from London to see, not him, but his house?" 66 He was at home," answered Willoughby, " and his Lady, too." 65 Probably he had company?" "I believe a great deal; for a number of ladies and gentlemen moved out of the Vandyck room when we came to it to admire the paintings." "Pleasant life!" said Blythfield, turning to me. 66 Why, that's a matter of taste," returned Willoughby. "Lord Grandborough is not obliged to show his house, unless he likes it." 66 Exactly so: nor I, to be rummaged out of a Vandyck room, when I don't like it, and people I never heard of come from London to see me." 66 It shows his good nature," said Willoughby. "It shows his vanity," observed Blythfield. 66 However, my noble cousin is an excellent person; does a great deal of good, and lives en |