ambassador at the Hague, or--"

"Pshaw! the boy's always ready enough with his answers," interrupted Mr.
Fielden, rather petulantly. "There's the fair, my dear,--more in your
way, I see, than Sir William Temple's philosophy."

And Helen was right; the fair was no Eastern bazaar, but how delighted
that young, impressionable mind was, notwithstanding,--delighted with the
swings and the roundabouts, the shows, the booths, even down to the gilt
gingerbread kings and queens! All minds genuinely poetical are
peculiarly susceptible to movement,--that is, to the excitement of
numbers. If the movement is sincerely joyous, as in the mirth of a
village holiday, such a nature shares insensibly in the joy; but if the
movement is a false and spurious gayety, as in a state ball, where the
impassive face and languid step are out of harmony with the evident
object of the scene, then the nature we speak of feels chilled and
dejected. Hence it really is that the more delicate and ideal order of
minds soon grow inexpressibly weary of the hack routine of what are
called fashionable pleasures. Hence the same person most alive to a
dance on the green, would be without enjoyment at Almack's. It was not
because one scene is a village green, and the other a room in King
Street, nor is it because the actors in the one are of the humble, in the
others of the noble class; but simply because the enjoyment in the first
is visible and hearty, because in the other it is a listless and
melancholy pretence. Helen fancied it was the swings and the booths that
gave her that innocent exhilaration,--it was not so; it was the
unconscious sympathy with the crowd around her. When the poetical nature
quits its own dreams for the actual world, it enters and transfuses
itself into the hearts and humours of others. The two wings of that
spirit which we call Genius are revery and sympathy. But poor little