"Never, indeed, they give me the idea of handsomely ornamented mansions, seen through an inverted telescope, for there is a little of everything about them."
"Athen wan, good, ould, red stone house, like what was in A——, is worth a score iv thim."
The extreme newness of everything, notwithstanding its prettiness and neatness, was displeasing to Kate's eye, accustomed, as it had been, to the mellow tints and picturesque irregularity of A——.
It is remarkable how much more congenial, both to heart and mind, are indefinite and irregular outlines; as if the more perfect finish, was all too cramped, too finite to satisfy the boundless and formless imaginations of man's heart; as Tupper beautifully says,
"Thinkest thou the thousand eyes that shine with rapture on a ruin,
Would have looked with half their wonder on a perfect pile?
And wherefore not—but that light tints, suggesting unseen beauties,
Fill the complacent gazer with self grown conceits?"
The library was, without much difficulty, found, and the demure damsel, who there represented the muses, in reply to Kate's enquiries, handed her a catalogue, in which she soon lost herself, as one usually does in the vain attempt to discover favorite authors, widely separated by an inexorable alphabetical arrangement.
"Have you nothing by the authoress of 'The Cup and the Lip?'" asked Kate.