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¬stream running through a fragrant garden, with beautiful women, delicious music, and now and then some excellent old wine, resembling our claret, which, let water-drinkers think as they please, gives a varnish to such a picture, which as they never looked through it they cannot at all comprehend. ¬As I observed that my young companion took but little share in the conversation, and seemed only to speak as if it were to interrupt the singing, I expressed my surprise to him, when humming a tune at intervals to himself, he said to me apart — " I can enjoy all this, my dear absurd friend, as much as any body, in its due season ; but in summer, nay in its very solstice, which I think is to-morrow, I would much rather be in town in the dirtiest lodging, al- most invisible from the dust and rubbish of old buildings pulling down on every side of me, than be seen here amidst the colours and per- fumes of all the trees and shrubs which ever blossomed in our world or in yours, or in that ¬one ¬
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