thought, or that elaborate finish, which the consciousness of writing for the scholar and the man of taste is calculated to give; nor have their dirty blue paper and slovenly types* the polished elegance that fits a volume for the hand or the eye of the fastidious epicure in literary enjoyment.  The first book I bought in America was the “Chronicles of the Cannongate.”  In asking the price, I was agreeably surprised to hear a dollar and a half named, being about one sixth of what I used to pay for its fellows in England; but on opening the grim pages, it was long before I could again call them cheap.  To be sure the pleasure of a bright well-printed page ought to be quite lost sight of in the glowing, galloping, bewitching course that the imagination sets out upon with a new Waverley novel; and so it was with me till I felt the want of it; and then I am almost ashamed to confess how often, in turning the thin dusky pages, my poor earth-born spirit paused in its pleasure, to sigh for hot-pressed wire-wove.

    (I must make an exception in favour of the American
     (Quarterly Review.  To the eye of the body it is in
     (all respects exactly the same thing as the English
     (Quarterly Review.

CHAPTER 10

Removal to the country—­Walk in the forest—­Equality

At length my wish of obtaining a house in the country was gratified.  A very pretty cottage, the residence of a gentleman who was removing into town, for the convenience of his business as a lawyer, was to let, and I immediately secured it.  It was situated in a little village about a mile and a half from the town, close to the foot of the hills formerly mentioned as the northern boundary of it.  We found ourselves much more comfortable here than in the city.  The house was pretty and commodious, our sitting-rooms were cool and airy; we had got rid of the detestable mosquitoes, and we had an ice-house that never failed.  Beside all this, we had the pleasure of gathering our tomatoes from our own garden, and receiving our milk from our own cow.  Our manner of life was infinitely more to my taste than before; it gave us all the privileges of rusticity, which are fully as incompatible with a residence in a little town of Western America as with a residence in London.  We lived on terms of primaeval intimacy with our cow, for if we lay down on our lawn she did not scruple to take a sniff at the book we were reading, but then she gave us her own sweet breath in return.  The verge of the cool-looking forest that rose opposite our windows was so near, that we often used it as an extra drawing-room, and there was no one to wonder if we went out with no other preparation than our parasols, carrying books and work enough to while away a long summer day in the shade; the meadow that divided us from it was covered with a fine short grass, that continued for a little way under the trees, making