SUNNY MEMORIES OF FOREIGN LANDS.
Cathedrals.
Cathedrals do not seem to me to have been built. They seem, rather, stupendous growths of nature, like crystals, or cliffs of basalt.
French conversation.
Conversation of French circles seems to me like gambols of a thistledown, or the rainbow changes in soap-bubbles. One laughs with tears in one’s eyes. One moment confounded with the absolute childhood of the simplicity, in the next one is a little afraid of the keen edge of the shrewdness.
The Germans.
These Germans seem an odd race, a mixture of clay and spirit—what with their beer-drinking and smoking, and their slow, stolid ways, you would think them perfectly earthy; but ethereal fire is all the while working in them, and bursting out in most unexpected little jets of poetry and sentiment, like blossoms on a cactus.