shallow and worldly. No, you good and godly people, what do you know
about us? You are no more capable of judging than the ephemera, which
lives but for a day, and so must consider the world all sunshine, all
light. How can it imagine the night which closes round later on, when
neither it nor any of its ancestors have ever lived to see it?

You ought to be punished for your ignorant mutterings. You complain of
the well-dressed happy throng. You should be turned out in the streets
in August and September, and if the utter destitution does not shortly
turn your brains back in the right direction I am afraid your case is
hopeless.

Does any place come up to London I wonder? Having never been out of
England I cannot give an opinion. Unfortunately I have not the gift,
like some people, of either imagining or describing places I have
never seen--descriptions generally gleaned from other books and
compiled under one authorship as original compositions. Why cannot
they be content with laying their English stories in English scenery:
places they know well and can write about. Some save up their money in
order to go abroad and visit one particular place, so as to bring new
scenes into their new books. But ah, how weary you get of this one
place! It is brought into at least three of their next novels.
Everything, past, present and future seems to happen there. Your one
prayer, as you lay down the book, is to the effect that they may soon
be able to save up a little more and visit another spot.

There is so much going on in May, June, and July, that it is a
difficulty to get through all your engagements and yet see everything
there is to be seen. Then there is the Park. Two or three hours of the
day must at least be spent in the Park. There we all come out to show