July 7, 1860.]
THE LONDON SEASON.
43
The London Season. (Page 41.)
ing out jokes at each other. That little fellow in Kickerbockers on the Shetland is distinctly laying down the law in a masculine sort of way to the little lady with the partridge wing on the grey pony, who bursts out laughing at him, and brings him to a sense of his situation in true feminine style—for all the world as her sister Ellen, just out of her teens, would do with the Colonel if he gave himself airs. My young friend, you are imbibing learning of the most valuable kind—attention to your dear governess!
Well, I say that all this is very pleasant—one amongst the pleasant things of London during the season. Nor are the stroll home and the London dinners disagreeable. Should you by hard fate be compelled to go and hear the final strains of Madame Grisi, or the fresh warblings of the Hungarian Csillag, at a later period of the evening, I should not be very ready to bewail your misfortune. The danger is, that a man may not know London and the felicities of the London season well until he has exhausted half the term of his pilgrimage. Happy is he who has so carefully arranged his life, that when it is half exhausted, he has surrounded himself with friends, in whose houses he can find a pleasant smile and a hearty welcome; and this is only possible in London. In the country, with enormous wealth at your disposal, you can indeed fill your house with friends, but, non cuivis, we are not all born with golden ladles in our mouths. Besides, be as rich as you will, you can offer your friends a good deal, but you cannot place a London at their disposal, nor are they free agents as long as they are guests at your house. It is better to be in London, and to be free, and to look up the pleasant people as you feel a thirst for their presence. Under ordinary circumstances nothing is duller, as far as society is concerned, than country life in England; and out of England it can scarcely be said to exist. Whatever they may be to the natives of the countries, foreign capitals are to