A poorer landscape to draw never was known, nor a pleasanter to
see--the children especially, who are inordinately fat and rosy. Let
it be remembered, too, that here we are out of the country of ugly
women; the expression of the face is almost uniformly gentle and
pleasing, and the figures of the women, wrapt in long black monk-like
cloaks and hoods, very picturesque. No wonder there are so many
children: the "Guide-book" (omniscient Mr. Murray!) says there are
fifteen thousand paupers in the town, and we know how such multiply.
How the deuce do their children look so fat and rosy? By eating
dirt-pies, I suppose. I saw a couple making a very nice savory one,
and another employed in gravely sticking strips of stick betwixt the
pebbles at the house-door, and so making for herself a stately garden.
The men and women don't seem to have much more to do. There are a
couple of tall chimneys at either suburb of the town, where no doubt
manufactories are at work, but within the walls everybody seems
decently idle.
We have been, of course, abroad to visit the lions.
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