I have an almost feminine partiality for old china. When I go to see
any great house, I inquire for the china-closet, and next for the
picture gallery. I cannot defend the order of preference, but by
saying, that we have all some taste or other, of too ancient a date
to admit of our remembering distinctly that it was an acquired one. I
can call to mind the first play, and the first exhibition, that I was
taken to; but I am not conscious of a time when china jars and saucers
were introduced into my imagination.

I had no repugnance then--why should I now have?--to those little,
lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that under the notion of men and
women, float about, uncircumscribed by any element, in that world
before perspective--a china tea-cup.

I like to see my old friends--whom distance cannot diminish--figuring
up in the air (so they appear to our optics), yet on _terra firma_
still--for so we must in courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue,
which the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, has made to spring up
beneath their sandals.

I love the men with women's faces, and the women, if possible, with
still more womanish expressions.

Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to a lady from a
salver--two miles off. See how distance seems to set off respect!
And here the same lady, or another--for likeness is identity on
tea-cups--is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the hither
side of this calm garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a
right angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly
land her in the midst of a flowery mead--a furlong off on the other
side of the same strange stream!

Farther on--if far or near can be predicated of their world--see
horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays.

Here--a cow and rabbit couchant, and co-extensive--so objects show,
seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine Cathay.

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our Hyson (which we
are old fashioned enough to drink unmixed still of an afternoon) some
of these _speciosa miracula_ upon a set of extraordinary old blue
china (a recent purchase) which we were now for the first time using;
and could not help remarking, how favourable circumstances had been
to us of late years, that we could afford to please the eye sometimes
with trifles of this sort--when a passing sentiment seemed to
over-shade the brows of my companion. I am quick at detecting these
summer clouds in Bridget.

"I wish the good old times would come again," she said, "when we were
not quite so rich. I do not mean, that I want to be poor; but there
was a middle state;"--so she was pleased to ramble on,--"in which I am
sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase, now
that you have money enough and to spare. Formerly it used to be a
triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, O! how much ado I had to
get you to consent in those times!) we were used to have a debate two
or three days before, and to weigh the _for_ and _against_, and think
what we might spare it out of, and what saving we could hit upon, that
should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying then, when we felt
the money that we paid for it.

"Do you remember the brown suit, which you made to hang upon you, till
all your friends cried shame upon you, it grew so thread-bare--and all
because of that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged home
late at night from Barker's in Covent-garden? Do you remember how we
eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to the purchase,
and had not come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock of
the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, fearing you
should be too late--and when the old bookseller with some grumbling
opened his shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting
bedwards) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures--and when
you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumbersome--and when you
presented it to me--and when we were exploring the perfectness of it
(_collating_ you called it)--and while I was repairing some of the
loose leaves with paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be
left till day-break--was there no pleasure in being a poor man? or can
those neat black clothes which you wear now, and are so careful to
keep brushed, since we have become rich and finical, give you half
the honest vanity, with which you flaunted it about in that over-worn
suit--your old corbeau--for four or five weeks longer than you should
have done, to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen--or
sixteen shillings was it?--a great affair we thought it then--which
you had lavished on the old folio. Now you can afford to buy any book
that pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me home any
nice old purchases now.