"If the Herrnhuthers were right in their notions, the world would
have been laid out in squares and angles and right lines, and
everything would have been white and black and snuff-color, as they
have been clipped by these merciless retrenchers of beauty and
enjoyment. And then their dormitories! Think of between one and two
hundred of these simple gentlemen cooped up at night in one great
chamber! What a concert of barrel-organs in this great resounding
saloon! And then their plan of marriage! The very birds of the air
choose their mates from preference and inclination; but this
detestable system of _lot_! The sentiment of love may be, and is,
in a great measure, a fostered growth of poetry and romance, and
balderdashed with false sentiment; but with all its vitiations, it
is the beauty and the charm, the flavor and the fragrance, of all
intercourse between man and woman; it is the rosy cloud in the
morning of life; and if it does too often resolve itself into the
shower, yet, to my mind, it only makes our nature more fruitful in
what is excellent and amiable."

Better suited him Prague, which is certainly a part of the "naughty
world" that Irving preferred:--

"Old Prague still keeps up its warrior look, and swaggers about
with its rusty corselet and helm, though both sadly battered. There
seems to me to be an air of style and fashion about the first
people of Prague, and a good deal of beauty in the fashionable
circle. This, perhaps, is owing to my contemplating it from a
distance, and my imagination lending it tints occasionally. Both
actors and audience, contemplated from the pit of a theatre, look
better than when seen in the boxes and behind the scenes. I like to
contemplate society in this way occasionally, and to dress it up by
the help of fancy, to my own taste. When I get in the midst of it,
it is too apt to lose its charm, and then there is the trouble and
_ennui_ of being obliged to take an active part in the farce; but
to be a mere spectator is amusing. I am glad, therefore, that I
brought no letters to Prague. I shall leave it with a favorable
idea of its society and manners, from knowing nothing accurate of
either; and with a firm belief that every pretty woman I have seen
is an angel, as I am apt to think every pretty woman, until I hav