A Change of Air by Antonio Hope

It has been contumeliously said by insolent Englishmen -- a part of our population which may sometimes seem to foreign eyes as large as the whole -- that you might put any other of the world's capitals, say Paris or New York, down in London, and your cabman would not be able to find it. However this may be, -- and there is no need in this place either for assertions or admissions, -- it is certain that you might unload a wagonful of talents in Piccadilly, and they would speedily be absorbed and leave little obvious trace of the new ingredient. Hence the advantage, for a man who does not dislike the _digito monstrari et dicier_ "_hic est_," of dwelling in small places, and hence, a cynic might suggest, the craving for quieter quarters displayed by some of our less conspicuous celebrities. It is better, says a certain authority, to reign in hell than serve in heaven; and a man may grow weary of walking unrecognized down the Strand, when he has only, to be the beheld of all beholders, to take up his residence in -- perhaps it will be more prudent to say Market Denborough, and not point the finger of printed scorn at any better known resort.

This very ungenerous explanation was the one which Miss Victoria Smith chose to adopt as accounting for Dale Bannister's coming to Littlehill. Such an idea had never crossed her mind at first, but it became evident that a man who could leave his friend in the lurch and palter with his principles, as Dale's letter to the _Chronicle_ showed him to be doing, could only be credited with any discoverable motive less bad and contemptible than the worst through mere hastiness and ill-considered good nature. For her part, she liked a man to stick to his colors and to his friends, and not be ashamed before the tea tables of Denshire. No, she had never read his poems, she had no time, but papa had, and agreed with every word of them.