When Edward Redclyffe removed from the old pensioner's narrow quarters
to the far ampler accommodations of the Warden's house, the latter
gentleman was taking his morning exercise on horseback. A servant,
however, in a grave livery, ushered him to an apartment, where the new
guest was surprised to see some luggage which two or three days before
Edward had ordered from London, on finding that his stay in this part
of the country was likely to be much longer than he had originally
contemplated. The sight of these things--the sense which they conveyed
that he was an expected and welcome guest--tended to raise the spirits
of the solitary wanderer, and made him.... [Endnote: 1.]

The Warden's abode was an original part of the ancient establishment,
being an entire side of the quadrangle which the whole edifice
surrounded; and for the establishment of a bachelor (which was his new
friend's condition), it seemed to Edward Redclyffe abundantly spacious
and enviably comfortable. His own chamber had a grave, rich depth, as
it were, of serene and time-long garniture, for purposes of repose,
convenience, daily and nightly comfort, that it was soothing even to
look at. Long accustomed, as Redclyffe had been, to the hardy and rude
accommodations, if so they were to be called, of log huts and hasty,
mud-built houses in the Western States of America, life, its daily
habits, its passing accommodations, seemed to assume an importance,
under these aspects, which it had not worn before; those deep downy
beds, those antique chairs, the heavy carpet, the tester and curtains,
the stateliness of the old room,--they had a charm as compared with
the thin preparation of a forester's bedchamber, such as Redclyffe
had chiefly known them, in the ruder parts of the country, that really
seemed to give a more substantial value to life; so much pains had been
taken with its modes and appliances, that it looked more solid than
before. Nevertheless, there was something ghostly in that stately
curtained bed, with the deep gloom within its drapery, so ancient as
it was; and suggestive of slumberers there who had long since slumbered
elsewhere.

The old servant, whose grave, circumspect courtesy was a matter quite
beyond Redclyffe's experience, soon knocked at the chamber door, and
suggested that the guest might desire to await the Warden's arrival in
the library, which was the customary sitting-room. Redclyffe assenting,
he was ushered into a spacious apartment, lighted by various Gothic
windows, surrounded with old oaken cases, in which were ranged volumes,
most or many of which seemed to be coeval with the foundation of the
hospital; and opening one of them, Redclyffe saw for the first time in
his life [Endnote: 2] a genuine book-worm, that ancient form of creature
living upon literature; it had gnawed a circular hole, penetrating
through perhaps a score of pages of the seldom opened volume, and was
still at his musty feast. There was a fragrance of old learning in
this ancient library; a soothing influence, as the American felt,
of time-honored ideas, where the strife, novelties, uneasy agitating
conflict, attrition of unsettled theories, fresh-springing thought, did
not attain a foothold; a good place to spend a life which should not be
agitated with the disturbing element; so quiet, so peaceful; how slowly,
with how little wear, would the years pass here! How unlike what he had
hitherto known, and was destined to know,--the quick, violent struggle
of his mother country, which had traced lines in his young brow already.
How much would be saved by taking his former existence, not as dealing
with things yet malleable, but with fossils, things that had had their
life, and now were unchangeable, and revered, here!

At one end of this large room there was a bowed window, the space near
which was curtained off from the rest of the library, and, the window
being filled with painted glass (most of which seemed old, though there
were insertions evidently of modern and much inferior handiwork), there
was a rich gloom of light, or you might call it a rich glow, according
to your mood of mind. Redclyffe soon perceived that this curtained
recess was the especial study of his friend, the Warden, and as such
was provided with all that modern times had contrived for making an
enjoyment out of the perusal of old books; a study table, with every
convenience of multifarious devices, a great inkstand, pens; a luxurious
study chair, where thought [Endnote: 3] upon. To say the truth, there
was not, in this retired and thoughtful nook, anything that indicated to
Redclyffe that the Warden had been recently engaged in consultation of
learned authorities,--or in abstract labor, whether moral, metaphysical
or historic; there was a volume of translations of Mother Goose's
Melodies into Greek and Latin, printed for private circulation, and with
the Warden's name on the title-page; a London newspaper of the preceding
day; Lillebullero, Chevy Chase, and the old political ballads; and,
what a little amused Redclyffe, the three volumes of a novel from a
circulating library; so that Redclyffe came to the conclusion that the
good Warden, like many educated men, whose early scholastic propensities
are backed up by the best of opportunities, and all desirable facilities
and surroundings, still contented himself with gathering a flower or
two, instead of attempting the hard toil requisite to raise a crop.

It must not be omitted, that there was a fragrance in the room, which,
unlike as the scene was, brought back, through so many years, to
Redclyffe's mind a most vivid remembrance of poor old Doctor Grim's
squalid chamber, with his wild, bearded presence in the midst of it,
puffing his everlasting cloud; for here was the same smell of tobacco,
and on the mantel-piece of a chimney lay a German pipe, and an old
silver tobacco-box into which was wrought the leopard's head and the
inscription in black letter. The Warden had evidently availed himself of
one of the chief bachelor sources of comfort. Redclyffe, whose destiny
had hitherto, and up to a very recent period, been to pass a feverishly
active life, was greatly impressed by all these tokens of learned
ease,--a degree of self-indulgence combined with duties enough to
quiet an otherwise uneasy conscience,--by the consideration that this
pensioner acted a good part in a world where no one is entitled to be an
unprofitable laborer. He thought within himself, that his prospects in
his own galvanized country, that seemed to him, a few years since, to
offer such a career for an adventurous young man, conscious of motive
power, had nothing so enticing as such a nook as this,--a quiet recess
of unchangeable old time, around which the turbulent tide now eddied
and rushed, but could not disturb it. Here, to be sure, hope, love,
ambition, came not, progress came not; but here was what, just now, the
early wearied American could appreciate better than aught else,--here
was rest.

The fantasy took Edward to imitate the useful labors of the learned
Warden, and to make trial whether his own classical condition--the
results of Doctor Grim's tuition, and subsequently that of an American
College--had utterly deserted him, by attempting a translation of a few
verses of Yankee Doodle; and he was making hopeful progress when the
Warden came in fresh and rosy from a morning's ride in a keen east wind.
He shook hands heartily with his guest, and, though by no means frigid
at their former interview, seemed to have developed at once into
a kindlier man, now that he had suffered the stranger to cross his
threshold, and had thus made himself responsible for his comfort.

"I shall take it greatly amiss," said he, "if you do not pick up fast
under my roof, and gather a little English ruddiness, moreover, in the
walks and rides that I mean to take you. Your countrymen, as I saw them,
are a sallow set; but I think you must have English blood enough in your
veins to eke out a ruddy tint, with the help of good English beef and
ale, and daily draughts of wholesome light and air."

"My cheeks would not have been so very pale," said Edward, laughing,
"if an English shot had not deprived me of a good deal of my American
blood."

"Only follow my guidance," said the Warden, "and I assure you you shall
have back whatever blood we have deprived you of, together with an
addition. It is now luncheon-time, and we will begin the process of
replenishing your veins."

So they went into a refectory, where were spread upon the board what
might have seemed a goodly dinner to most Americans; though for this
Englishman it was but a by-incident, a slight refreshment, to enable him
to pass the midway stage of life. It is an excellent thing to see the
faith of a hearty Englishman in his own stomach, and how well that
kindly organ repays his trust; with what devout assimilation he takes to
himself his kindred beef, loving it, believing in it, making a good
use of it, and without any qualms of conscience or prescience as to the
result. They surely eat twice as much as we; and probably because of
their undoubted faith it never does them any harm. Dyspepsia is merely a
superstition with us. If we could cease to believe in its existence,
it would exist no more. Redclyffe, eating little himself, his wound
compelling him to be cautious as to his diet, was secretly delighted to
see what sweets the Warden found in a cold round of beef, in a pigeon
pie, and a cut or two of Yorkshire ham; not that he was ravenous, but
that his stomach was so healthy.

"You eat little, my friend," said the Warden, pouring out a glass of
sherry for Redclyffe, and another for himself. "But you are right, in
such a predicament as yours. Spare your stomach while you are weakly,
and it will help you when you are strong This, now, is the most
enjoyable meal of the day with me. You will not see me play such a knife
and fork at dinner; though there too, especially if I have ridden out
in the afternoon, I do pretty well. But, come now, if (like most of your
countrymen, as I have heard) you are a lover of the weed, I can offer
you some as delicate Latakia as you are likely to find in England."

"I lack that claim upon your kindness, I am sorry to say," replied
Redclyffe. "I am not a good smoker, though I have occasionally taken a
cigar at need."

"Well, when you find yourself growing old, and especially if you chance
to be a bachelor, I advise you to cultivate the habit," said the Warden.
"A wife is the only real obstacle or objection to a pipe; they can
seldom be thoroughly reconciled, and therefore it is well for a man to
consider, beforehand, which of the two he can best dispense with. I know
not how it might have been once, had the conflicting claim of these two
rivals ever been fairly presented to me; but I now should be at no loss
to choose the pipe."

They returned to the study; and while the Warden took his pipe,
Redclyffe, considering that, as the guest of this hospitable Englishman,
he had no right to continue a stranger, thought it fit to make known to
him who he was, and his condition, plans, and purposes. He represented
himself as having been liberally educated, bred to the law, but (to
his misfortune) having turned aside from that profession to engage
in politics. In this pursuit, indeed, his success wore a flattering
outside; for he had become distinguished, and, though so young, a
leader, locally at least, in the party which he had adopted. He had
been, for a biennial term, a member of Congress, after winning some
distinction in the legislature of his native State; but some one of
those fitful changes to which American politics are peculiarly liable
had thrown him out, in his candidacy for his second term; and the
virulence of party animosity, the abusiveness of the press, had acted so
much upon a disposition naturally somewhat too sensitive for the career
which he had undertaken, that he had resolved, being now freed from
legislative cares, to seize the opportunity for a visit to England,
whither he was drawn by feelings which every educated and impressible
American feels, in a degree scarcely conceivable by the English
themselves. And being here (but he had already too much experience of
English self-sufficiency to confess so much) he began to feel the deep
yearning which a sensitive American--his mind full of English thoughts,
his imagination of English poetry, his heart of English character and
sentiment--cannot fail to be influenced by,--the yearning of the
blood within his veins for that from which it has been estranged; the
half-fanciful regret that he should ever have been separated from these
woods, these fields, these natural features of scenery, to which his
nature was moulded, from the men who are still so like himself, from
these habits of life and thought which (though he may not have known
them for two centuries) he still perceives to have remained in some
mysterious way latent in the depths of his character, and soon to be
reassumed, not as a foreigner would do it, but like habits native to
him, and only suspended for a season.

This had been Redclyffe's state of feeling ever since he landed in
England, and every day seemed to make him more at home; so that it
seemed as if he were gradually awakening to a former reality.

CHAPTER XV.

After lunch, the Warden showed a good degree of kind anxiety about his
guest, and ensconced him in a most comfortable chair in his study, where
he gave him his choice of books old and new, and was somewhat surprised,
as well as amused, to see that Redclyffe seemed most attracted towards a
department of the library filled with books of English antiquities, and
genealogies, and heraldry; the two latter, indeed, having the preference
over the others.

"This is very remarkable," said he, smiling. "By what right or reason,
by what logic of character, can you, a democrat, renouncing all
advantages of birth,--neither priding yourself on family, nor seeking
to found one,--how therefore can you care for genealogies, or for this
fantastic science of heraldry? Having no antiquities, being a people
just made, how can you care for them?"

"My dear sir," said Redclyffe, "I doubt whether the most devoted
antiquarian in England ever cares to search for an old thing merely
because it is old, as any American just landed on your shores would do.
Age is our novelty; therefore it attracts and absorbs us. And as for
genealogies, I know not what necessary repulsion there may be between
it and democracy. A line of respectable connections, being the harder to
preserve where there is nothing in the laws to defend it, is therefore
the more precious when we have it really to boast of."

"True," said the Warden, "when a race keeps itself distinguished among
the grimy order of your commonalty, all with equal legal rights to place
and eminence as itself, it must needs be because there is a force and
efficacy in the blood. I doubt not," he said, looking with the free
approval of an elder man at the young man's finely developed face and
graceful form,--"I doubt not that you can look back upon a line of
ancestry, always shining out from the surrounding obscurity of the mob."

Redclyffe, though ashamed of himself, could not but feel a paltry
confusion and embarrassment, as he thought of his unknown origin, and
his advent from the almshouse; coming out of that squalid darkness as
if he were a thing that had had a spontaneous birth out of poverty,
meanness, petty crime; and here in ancestral England, he felt more
keenly than ever before what was his misfortune.

"I must not let you lie under this impression," said he manfully to the
Warden. "I have no ancestry; at the very first step my origin is lost
in impenetrable obscurity. I only know that but for the aid of a kind
friend--on whose benevolence I seem to have had no claim whatever--my
life would probably have been poor, mean, unenlightened."

"Well, well," said the kind Warden,--hardly quite feeling, however, the
noble sentiment which he expressed,--"it is better to be the first noble
illustrator of a name than even the worthy heir of a name that has been
noble and famous for a thousand years. The highest pride of some of our
peers, who have won their rank by their own force, has been to point to
the cottage whence they sprung. Your posterity, at all events, will have
the advantage of you,--they will know their ancestor."

Redclyffe sighed, for there was truly a great deal of the foolish
yearning for a connection with the past about him; his imagination had
taken this turn, and the very circumstances of his obscure birth gave it
a field to exercise itself.

"I advise you," said the Warden, by way of changing the conversation,
"to look over the excellent history of the county which you are now in.
There is no reading better, to my mind, than these country histories;
though doubtless a stranger would hardly feel so much interest in them
as one whose progenitors, male or female, have strewn their dust over
the whole field of which the history treats. This history is a fine
specimen of the kind."

The work to which Redclyffe's attention was thus drawn was in two large
folio volumes, published about thirty years before, bound in calf by
some famous artist in that line, illustrated with portraits and views of
ruined castles, churches, cathedrals, the seats of nobility and gentry;
Roman, British, and Saxon remains, painted windows, oak carvings, and so
forth.

And as for its contents the author ascended for the history of the
county as far as into the pre-Roman ages, before Caesar had ever heard
of Britain; and brought it down, an ever swelling and increasing tale,
to his own days; inclusive of the separate histories, and pedigrees,
and hereditary legends, and incidents, of all the principal families. In
this latter branch of information, indeed, the work seemed particularly
full, and contained every incident that would have worked well into
historical romance.

"Aye, aye," said the Warden, laughing at some strange incident of this
sort which Redclyffe read out to him. "My old friend Gibber, the learned
author of this work, (he has been dead this score of years, so he will
not mind my saying it,) had a little too much the habit of seeking his
authorities in the cottage chimney-corners. I mean that an old woman's
tale was just about as acceptable to him as a recorded fact; and to say
the truth, they are really apt to have ten times the life in them."

Redclyffe saw in the volume a full account of the founding of the
Hospital, its regulations and purposes, its edifices; all of which he
reserved for future reading, being for the present more attracted by
the mouldy gossip of family anecdotes which we have alluded to. Some of
these, and not the least singular, referred to the ancient family which
had founded the Hospital; and he was attracted by seeing a mention of a
Bloody Footstep, which reminded him of the strange old story which
good Doctor Grimshawe had related by his New England fireside, in those
childish days when Edward dwelt with him by the graveyard, On reading
it, however, he found that the English legend, if such it could be
called, was far less full and explicit than that of New England. Indeed,
it assigned various origins to the Bloody Footstep;--one being, that
it was the stamp of the foot of the Saxon thane, who fought at his
own threshold against the assault of the Norman baron, who seized his
mansion at the Conquest; another, that it was the imprint of a fugitive
who had sought shelter from the lady of the house during the Wars of the
Roses, and was dragged out by her husband, and slain on the door-step;
still another, that it was the footstep of a Protestant in Bloody Mary's
days, who, being sent to prison by the squire of that epoch, had lifted
his hands to Heaven, and stamped his foot, in appeal as against the
unjust violence with which he was treated, and stamping his foot, it had
left the bloody mark. It was hinted too, however, that another version,
which out of delicacy to the family the author was reluctant to state,
assigned the origin of the Bloody Footstep to so late a period as the
wars of the Parliament. And, finally, there was an odious rumor that
what was called the Bloody Footstep was nothing miraculous, after all,
but most probably a natural reddish stain in the stone door-step; but
against this heresy the excellent Dr. Gibber set his face most sturdily.

The original legend had made such an impression on Redclyffe's childish
fancy, that he became strangely interested in thus discovering it,
or something remotely like it, in England, and being brought by such
unsought means to reside so near it. Curious about the family to which
it had occurred, he proceeded to examine its records, as given in the
County History. The name was Redclyffe. Like most English pedigrees,
there was an obscurity about a good many of the earlier links; but the
line was traced out with reasonable definiteness from the days of Coeur
de Lion, and there was said to be a cross-legged ancestor in the
village church, who (but the inscription was obliterated) was probably
a Redclyffe, and had fought either under the Lion Heart or in the
Crusades. It was, in subsequent ages, one of the most distinguished
families, though there had been turbulent men in all those turbulent
times, hard fighters. In one age, a barony of early creation seemed to
have come into the family, and had been, as it were, playing bo-peep
with the race for several centuries. Some of them had actually assumed
the title; others had given it up for lack of sufficient proof; but
still there was such a claim, and up to the time at which this County
History was written, it had neither been made out, nor had the hope of
doing so been relinquished.

"Have the family," asked Redclyffe of his host, "ever yet made out their
claim to this title, which has so long been playing the will-of-the-wisp
with them?"

"No, not yet," said the Warden, puffing out a volume of smoke from his
meerschaum, and making it curl up to the ceiling. "Their claim has as
little substance, in my belief, as yonder vanishing vapor from my pipe.
But they still keep up their delusion. I had supposed that the claim
would perish with the last squire, who was a childless man,--at least,
without legitimate heirs; but this estate passed to one whom we can
scarcely call an Englishman, he being a Catholic, the descendant of
forefathers who have lived in Italy since the time of George II., and
who is, moreover, a Catholic. We English would not willingly see an
ancestral honor in the possession of such a man!"

"Is there, do you think, a prospect of his success?"

"I have heard so, but hardly believe it," replied the Warden. "I
remember, some dozen or fifteen years ago, it was given out that some
clue had been found to the only piece of evidence that was wanting. It
had been said that there was an emigration to your own country, above a
hundred years ago, and on account of some family feud; the true heir
had gone thither and never returned. Now, the point was to prove the
extinction of this branch of the family. But, excuse me, I must pay an
official visit to my charge here. Will you accompany me, or continue to
pore over the County History?"

Redclyffe felt enough of the elasticity of convalescence to be desirous
of accompanying the Warden; and they accordingly crossed the enclosed
quadrangle to the entrance of the Hospital portion of the large and
intricate structure. It was a building of the early Elizabethan age, a
plaster and timber structure, like many houses of that period and much
earlier. [Endnote: 1] Around this court stood the building, with the
date 1437 cut on the front. On each side, a row of gables looked upon
the enclosed space, most venerable old gables, with heavy mullioned
windows filled with little diamond panes of glass, and opening on
lattices. On two sides there was a cloistered walk, under echoing
arches, and in the midst a spacious lawn of the greenest and loveliest
grass, such as England only can show, and which, there, is of perennial
verdure and beauty. In the midst stood a stone statue of a venerable
man, wrought in the best of mediæval sculpture, with robe and ruff, and
tunic and venerable beard, resting on a staff, and holding what looked
like a clasped book in his hand. The English atmosphere, together
with the coal smoke, settling down in the space of centuries from the
chimneys of the Hospital, had roughened and blackened this venerable
piece of sculpture, enclosing it as it were in a superficies of decay;
but still (and perhaps the more from these tokens of having stood so
long among men) the statue had an aspect of venerable life, and of
connection with human life, that made it strongly impressive.

"This is the effigy of Sir Edward Redclyffe, the founder of the
Hospital," said the Warden. "He is a most peaceful and venerable old
gentleman in his attire and aspect, as you see; but he was a fierce old
fellow in his day, and is said to have founded the Hospital as a means
of appeasing Heaven for some particular deed of blood, which he had
imposed upon his conscience in the War of the Roses."

"Yes," said Redclyffe, "I have just read in the County History that the
Bloody Footstep was said to have been imprinted in his time. But what is
that thing which he holds in his hand?"

"It is a famous heirloom of the Redclyffes," said the Warden, "on
the possession of which (as long as they did possess it) they prided
themselves, it is said, more than on their ancient manor-house. It was
a Saxon ornament, which a certain ancestor was said to have had from
Harold, the old Saxon king; but if there ever was any such article, it
has been missing from the family mansion for two or three hundred years.
There is not known to be an antique relic of that description now in
existence."

"I remember having seen such an article,--yes, precisely of that shape,"
observed Redclyffe, "in the possession of a very dear old friend of
mine, when I was a boy."

"What, in America?" exclaimed the Warden. "That is very remarkable. The
time of its being missed coincides well enough with that of the early
settlement of New England. Some Puritan, before his departure, may have
thought himself doing God service by filching the old golden gewgaw from
the Cavalier; for it was said to be fine, ductile gold."

The circumstances struck Redclyffe with a pleasant wonder; for, indeed,
the old statue held the closest possible imitation, in marble, of that
strange old glitter of gold which he himself had so often played with
in the Doctor's study; [Endnote: 2] so identical, that he could have
fancied that he saw the very thing, changed from metal into stone, even
with its bruises and other casual marks in it. As he looked at the
old statue, his imagination played with it, and his naturally great
impressibility half made him imagine that the old face looked at him
with a keen, subtile, wary glance, as if acknowledging that it held some
secret, but at the same time defying him to find it out. And then again
came that visionary feeling that had so often swept over him since he
had been an inmate of the Hospital.

All over the interior part of the building was carved in stone the
leopard's head, with wearisome iteration; as if the founder were anxious
to imprint his device so numerously, lest--when he produced this edifice
as his remuneration to Eternal Justice for many sins--the Omniscient Eye
should fail to be reminded that Sir Edward Redclyffe had done it.
But, at all events, it seemed to Redclyffe that the ancient knight had
purposed a good thing, and in a measurable degree had effected it; for
here stood the venerable edifice securely founded, bearing the moss of
four hundred years upon it; and though wars, and change of dynasties,
and religious change, had swept around it, with seemingly destructive
potency, yet here had the lodging, the food, the monastic privileges of
the brethren been held secure, and were unchanged by all the altering
mariners of the age. The old fellow, somehow or other, seemed to have
struck upon an everlasting rock, and founded his pompous charity there.

They entered an arched door on the left of the quadrangle, and found
themselves hi a dark old hall with oaken beams; to say the truth, it
was a barn-like sort of enclosure, and was now used as a sort of
rubbish-place for the Hospital, where they stored away old furniture,
and where carpenter's work might be done. And yet, as the Warden assured
Redclyffe, it was once a hall of state, hung with tapestry, carpeted,
for aught he knew, with cloth of gold, and set with rich furniture,
and a groaning board in the midst. Here, the hereditary patron of the
Hospital had once entertained King James the First, who made a Latin
speech on the occasion, a copy of which was still preserved in the
archives. On the rafters of this old hall there were cobwebs in such
abundance that Redclyffe could not but reflect on the joy which old
Doctor Grimshawe would have had in seeing them, and the health to the
human race which he would have hoped to collect and distil from them.

From this great, antique room they crossed the quadrangle and entered
the kitchen of the establishment. A hospitable fire was burning there,
and there seemed to be a great variety of messes cooking; and the Warden
explained to Redclyffe that there was no general table in the Hospital;
but the brethren, at their own will and pleasure, either formed
themselves into companies or messes, of any convenient size, or enjoyed
a solitary meal by themselves, each in their own apartments. There was
a goodly choice of simple, but good and enjoyable food, and a sufficient
supply of potent ale, brewed in the vats of the Hospital, which, among
its other praiseworthy characteristics, was famous for this; having at
some epoch presumed to vie with the famous ale of Trinity, in Cambridge,
and the Archdeacon of Oxford,--these having come down to the hospital
from a private receipt of Sir Edward's butler, which was now lost in the
Redclyffe family; nor would the ungrateful Hospital give up its secret
even out of loyalty to its founder.

"I would use my influence with the brewer," said the Warden, on
communicating this little fact to Redclyffe; "but the present man--now
owner of the estate--is not worthy to have good ale brewed in his house;
having himself no taste for anything but Italian wines, wretched
fellow that he is! He might make himself an Englishman if he would take
heartily to our ale; and with that end in view, I should be glad to give
it him."

The kitchen fire blazed warmly, as we have said, and roast and stewed
and boiled were in process of cooking, producing a pleasant fume, while
great heaps of wheaten loaves were smoking hot from the ovens, and the
master cook and his subordinates were in fume and hiss, like beings that
were of a fiery element, and, though irritable and scorching, yet were
happier here than they could have been in any other situation.
The Warden seemed to have an especial interest and delight in this
department of the Hospital, and spoke apart to the head cook on the
subject (as Redclyffe surmised from what he overheard) of some especial
delicacy for his own table that day.

"This kitchen is a genial place," said he to Redclyffe, as they retired.
"In the evening, after the cooks have done their work, the brethren have
liberty to use it as a sort of common room, and to sit here over their
ale till a reasonable bedtime. It would interest you much to make one
at such a party; for they have had a varied experience in life, each one
for himself, and it would be strange to hear the varied roads by which
they have come hither."

"Yes," replied Redclyffe, "and, I presume, not one of them ever dreamed
of coming hither when he started in life. The only one with whom I am
acquainted could hardly have expected it, at all events."

"He is a remarkable man, more so than you may have had an opportunity
of knowing," said the Warden. "I know not his history, for he is not
communicative on that subject, and it was only necessary for him to
make out his proofs of claim to the charity to the satisfaction of the
Curators. But it has often struck me that there must have been strange
and striking events in his life,--though how it could have been without
his attracting attention and being known, I cannot say. I have myself
often received good counsel from him in the conduct of the Hospital, and
the present owner of the Hall seems to have taken him for his counsellor
and confidant, being himself strange to English affairs and life."

"I should like to call on him, as a matter of course rather than
courtesy," observed Redclyffe, "and thank him for his great kindness."

They accordingly ascended the dark oaken staircase with its black
balustrade, and approached the old man's chamber, the door of which they
found open, and in the blurred looking-glass which hung deep within the
room Redclyffe was surprised to perceive the young face of a woman, who
seemed to be arranging her head-gear, as women are always doing. It was
but a moment, and then it vanished like a vision.

"I was not aware," he said, turning to the Warden, "that there was a
feminine side to this establishment."

"Nor is there," said the old bachelor, "else it would not have held
together so many ages as it has. The establishment has its own wise,
monkish regulations; but we cannot prevent the fact, that some of the
brethren may have had foolish relations with the other sex at some
previous period of their lives. This seems to be the case with our wise
old friend of whom we have been speaking,--whereby he doubtless became
both wiser and sadder. If you have seen a female face here, it is that
of a relative who resides out of the hospital,--an excellent young lady,
I believe, who has charge of a school."

While he was speaking, the young lady in question passed out, greeting
the Warden in a cheerful, respectful way, in which deference to him was
well combined with a sense of what was due to herself.

"That," observed the Warden, who had returned her courtesy, with
a kindly air betwixt that of gentlemanly courtesy and a superior's
acknowledgment,--"that is the relative of our old friend; a young
person--a gentlewoman, I may almost call her--who teaches a little
school in the village here, and keeps her guardian's heart warm, no
doubt, with her presence. An excellent young woman, I do believe, and
very useful and faithful in her station."

CHAPTER XVI.

On entering the old palmer's apartment, they found him looking over some
ancient papers, yellow and crabbedly written, and on one of them a large
old seal, all of which he did up in a bundle and enclosed in a parchment
cover, so that, before they were well in the room, the documents were
removed from view.

"Those papers and parchments have a fine old yellow tint, Colcord," said
the Warden, "very satisfactory to an antiquary."

"There is nothing in them," said the old man, "of general interest. Some
old papers they are, which came into my possession by inheritance, and
some of them relating to the affairs of a friend of my youth;--a long
past time, and a long past friend," added he, sighing.

"Here is a new friend, at all events," said the kindly Warden, wishing
to cheer the old man, "who feels himself greatly indebted to you for
your care." [Endnote: 1.]

There now ensued a conversation between the three, in the course of
which reference was made to America, and the Warden's visit there.

"You are so mobile," he said, "you change so speedily, that I suppose
there are few external things now that I should recognize. The face of
your country changes like one of your own sheets of water, under the
influence of sun, cloud, and wind; but I suppose there is a depth below
that is seldom effectually stirred. It is a great fault of the country
that its sons find it impossible to feel any patriotism for it."

"I do not by any means acknowledge that impossibility," responded
Redclyffe, with a smile. "I certainly feel that sentiment very strongly
in my own breast, more especially since I have left America three
thousand miles behind me."

"Yes, it is only the feeling of self-assertion that rises against the
self-complacency of the English," said the Warden. "Nothing else;
for what else have you become the subject of this noble weakness of
patriotism? You cannot love anything beyond the soil of your own estate;
or in your case, if your heart is very large, you may possibly take in,
in a quiet sort of way, the whole of New England. What more is possible?
How can you feel a heart's love for a mere political arrangement, like
your Union? How can you be loyal, where personal attachment--the lofty
and noble and unselfish attachment of a subject to his prince--is out
of the question? where your sovereign is felt to be a mere man like
yourselves, whose petty struggles, whose ambition--mean before it grew
to be audacious--you have watched, and know him to be just the same now
as yesterday, and that to-morrow he will be walking unhonored amongst
you again? Your system is too bare and meagre for human nature to love,
or to endure it long. These stately degrees of society, that have
so strong a hold upon us in England, are not to be done away with so
lightly as you think. Your experiment is not yet a success by any means;
and you will live to see it result otherwise than you think!"

"It is natural for you Englishmen to feel thus," said Redclyffe;
"although, ever since I set my foot on your shores,--forgive me, but
you set me the example of free speech,--I have had a feeling of coming
change among all that you look upon as so permanent, so everlasting; and
though your thoughts dwell fondly on things as they are and have
been, there is a deep destruction somewhere in this country, that is
inevitably impelling it in the path of my own. But I care not for this.
I do aver that I love my country, that I am proud of its institutions,
that I have a feeling unknown, probably, to any but a republican, but
which is the proudest thing in me, that there is no man above me,--for
my ruler is only myself, in the person of another, whose office I impose
upon him,--nor any below me. If you would understand me, I would tell
you of the shame I felt when first, on setting foot in this country,
I heard a man speaking of his birth as giving him privileges; saw him
looking down on laboring men, as of an inferior race. And what I can
never understand, is the pride which you positively seem to feel in
having men and classes of men above you, born to privileges which you
can never hope to share. It may be a thing to be endured, but surely not
one to be absolutely proud of. And yet an Englishman is so."

"Ah! I see we lack a ground to meet upon," said the Warden. "We can
never truly understand each other. What you have last mentioned is one
of our inner mysteries. It is not a thing to be reasoned about, but
to be felt,--to be born within one; and I uphold it to be a generous
sentiment, and good for the human heart."

"Forgive me, sir," said Redclyffe, "but I would rather be the poorest
and lowest man in America than have that sentiment."

"But it might change your feeling, perhaps," suggested the Warden, "if
you were one of the privileged class."

"I dare not say that it would not," said Redclyffe, "for I know I have
a thousand weaknesses, and have doubtless as many more that I never
suspected myself of. But it seems to me at this moment impossible that I
should ever have such an ambition, because I have a sense of meanness
in not starting fair, in beginning the world with advantages that my
fellows have not."

"Really this is not wise," said the Warden, bluntly, "How can the start
in life be fair for all? Providence arranges it otherwise. Did you
yourself,--a gentleman evidently by birth and education,--did you start
fair in the race of life?"

Redclyffe remembered what his birth, or rather what his first
recollected place had been, and reddened.

"In birth, certainly, I had no advantages," said he, and would have
explained further but was kept back by invincible reluctance; feeling
that the bare fact of his origin in an almshouse would be accepted,
while all the inward assurances and imaginations that had reconciled
himself to the ugly fact would go for nothing. "But there were
advantages, very early in life," added he, smiling, "which perhaps I
ought to have been ashamed to avail myself of."

"An old cobwebby library,--an old dwelling by a graveyard,--an old
Doctor, busied with his own fantasies, and entangled in his own
cobwebs,--and a little girl for a playmate: these were things that you
might lawfully avail yourself of," said Colcord, unheard by the Warden,
who, thinking the conversation had lasted long enough, had paid a slight
passing courtesy to the old man, and was now leaving the room. "Do you
remain here long?" he added.

"If the Warden's hospitality holds out," said the American, "I shall be
glad; for the place interests me greatly."

"No wonder," replied Colcord.

"And wherefore no wonder?" said Redclyffe, impressed with the idea that
there was something peculiar in the tone of the old man's remark.

"Because," returned the other quietly, "it must be to you especially
interesting to see an institution of this kind, whereby one man's
benevolence or penitence is made to take the substance and durability of
stone, and last for centuries; whereas, in America, the solemn decrees
and resolutions of millions melt away like vapor, and everything shifts
like the pomp of sunset clouds; though it may be as pompous as they.
Heaven intended the past as a foundation for the present, to keep it
from vibrating and being blown away with every breeze."

"But," said Redclyffe, "I would not see in my country what I see
elsewhere,--the Past hanging like a mill-stone round a country's neck,
or encrusted in stony layers over the living form; so that, to all
intents and purposes, it is dead."

"Well," said Colcord, "we are only talking of the Hospital. You will
find no more interesting place anywhere. Stay amongst us; this is the
very heart of England, and if you wish to know the fatherland,--the
place whence you sprung,--this is the very spot!"

Again Redclyffe was struck with the impression that there was something
marked, something individually addressed to himself, in the old man's
words; at any rate, it appealed to that primal imaginative vein in him
which had so often, in his own country, allowed itself to dream over
the possibilities of his birth. He knew that the feeling was a vague and
idle one; but yet, just at this time, a convalescent, with a little
play moment in what had heretofore been a turbulent life, he felt an
inclination to follow out this dream, and let it sport with him, and by
and by to awake to realities, refreshed by a season of unreality. At
a firmer and stronger period of his life, though Redclyffe might have
indulged his imagination with these dreams, yet he would not have let
them interfere with his course of action; but having come hither in
utter weariness of active life, it seemed just the thing for him to
do,--just the fool's paradise for him to be in.

"Yes," repeated the old man, looking keenly in his face, "you will not
leave us yet."

Redclyffe returned through the quadrangle to the Warden's house; and
there were the brethren, sitting on benches, loitering in the sun,
which, though warm for England, seemed scarcely enough to keep these old
people warm, even with their cloth robes. They did not seem unhappy; nor
yet happy; if they were so, it must be with the mere bliss of existence,
a sleepy sense of comfort, and quiet dreaminess about things past,
leaving out the things to come,--of which there was nothing, indeed, in
their future, save one day after another, just like this, with loaf and
ale, and such substantial comforts, and prayers, and idle days again,
gathering by the great kitchen fire, and at last a day when they should
not be there, but some other old men in their stead. And Redclyffe
wondered whether, in the extremity of age, he himself would like to be
one of the brethren of the Leopard's Head. The old men, he was sorry
to see, did not seem very genial towards one another; in fact, there
appeared to be a secret enjoyment of one another's infirmities,
wherefore it was hard to tell, unless that each individual might fancy
himself to possess an advantage over his fellow, which he mistook for a
positive strength; and so there was sometimes a sardonic smile, when,
on rising from his seat, the rheumatism was a little evident in an old
fellow's joints; or when the palsy shook another's fingers so that he
could barely fill his pipe; or when a cough, the gathered spasmodic
trouble of thirty years, fairly convulsed another. Then, any two that
happened to be sitting near one another looked into each other's cold
eyes, and whispered, or suggested merely by a look (for they were bright
to such perceptions), "The old fellow will not outlast another winter."

Methinks it is not good for old men to be much together. An old man is
a beautiful object in his own place, in the midst of a circle of young
people, going down in various gradations to infancy, and all looking up
to the patriarch with filial reverence, keeping him warm by their own
burning youth; giving him the freshness of their thought and feeling,
with such natural influx that it seems as if it grew within his heart;
while on them he reacts with an influence that sobers, tempers, keeps
them down. His wisdom, very probably, is of no great account,--he cannot
fit to any new state of things; but, nevertheless, it works its effect.
In such a situation, the old man is kind and genial, mellow, more gentle
and generous, and wider-minded than ever before. But if left to himself,
or wholly to the society of his contemporaries, the ice gathers about
his heart, his hope grows torpid, his love--having nothing of his own
blood to develop it--grows cold; he becomes selfish, when he has nothing
in the present or the future worth caring about in himself; so that,
instead of a beautiful object, he is an ugly one, little, mean, and
torpid. I suppose one chief reason to be, that unless he has his own
race about him he doubts of anybody's love, he feels himself a stranger
in the world, and so becomes unamiable.

A very few days in the Warden's hospitable mansion produced an excellent
effect on Redclyffe's frame; his constitution being naturally excellent,
and a flow of cheerful spirits contributing much to restore him to
health, especially as the abode in this old place, which would probably
have been intolerably dull to most young Englishmen, had for this young
American a charm like the freshness of Paradise. In truth it had that
charm, and besides it another intangible, evanescent, perplexing charm,
full of an airy enjoyment, as if he had been here before. What could it
be? It could be only the old, very deepest, inherent nature, which the
Englishman, his progenitor, carried over the sea with him, nearly two
hundred years before, and which had lain buried all that time under
heaps of new things, new customs, new institutions, new snows of winter,
new layers of forest leaves, until it seemed dead, and was altogether
forgotten as if it had never been; but, now, his return had seemed to
dissolve or dig away all this incrustation, and the old English nature
awoke all fresh, so that he saw the green grass, the hedgerows, the old
structures and old manners, the old clouds, the old raindrops, with
a recognition, and yet a newness. Redclyffe had never been so quietly
happy as now. He had, as it were, the quietude of the old man about him,
and the freshness of his own still youthful years.

The Warden was evidently very favorably impressed with his Transatlantic
guest, and he seemed to be in a constant state of surprise to find an
American so agreeable a kind of person.

"You are just like an Englishman," he sometimes said. "Are you quite
sure that you were not born on this side of the water?"

This is said to be the highest compliment that an Englishman can pay
to an American; and doubtless he intends it as such. All the praise
and good will that an Englishman ever awards to an American is so far
gratifying to the recipient, that it is meant for him individually, and
is not to be put down in the slightest degree to the score of any regard
to his countrymen generally. So far from this, if an Englishman were to
meet the whole thirty millions of Americans, and find each individual
of them a pleasant, amiable, well-meaning, and well-mannered sort of
fellow, he would acknowledge this honestly in each individual case, but
still would speak of the whole nation as a disagreeable people.

As regards Redclyffe being precisely like an Englishman, we cannot but
think that the good Warden was mistaken. No doubt, there was a common
ground; the old progenitor (whose blood, moreover, was mixed with a
hundred other streams equally English) was still there, under this young
man's shape, but with a vast difference. Climate, sun, cold, heat, soil,
institutions, had made a change in him before he was born, and all the
life that he had lived since (so unlike any that he could have lived
in England) had developed it more strikingly. In manners, I cannot
but think that he was better than the generality of Englishmen, and
different from the highest-mannered men, though most resembling them.
His natural sensitiveness, a tincture of reserve, had been counteracted
by the frank mixture with men which his political course had made
necessary; he was quicker to feel what was right at the moment, than
the Englishman; more alive; he had a finer grain; his look was more
aristocratic than that of a thousand Englishmen of good birth and
breeding; he had a faculty of assimilating himself to new manners,
which, being his most un-English trait, was what perhaps chiefly made
the Warden think him so like an Englishman. When an Englishman is a
gentleman, to be sure, it is as deep in him as the marrow of his bones,
and the deeper you know him, the more you are aware of it, and that
generation after generation has contributed to develop and perfect these
unpretending manners, which, at first, may have failed to impress you,
under his plain, almost homely exterior. An American often gets as good
a surface of manners, in his own progress from youth, through the wear
and attrition of a successful life, to some high station in middle age;
whereas a plebeian Englishman, who rises to eminent station, never
does credit to it by his manners. Often you would not know the American
ambassador from a duke. This is often merely external; but in Redclyffe,
having delicate original traits in his character, it was something more;
and, we are bold to say, when our countrymen are developed, or any one
class of them, as they ought to be, they will show finer traits than
have yet been seen. We have more delicate and quicker sensibilities;
nerves more easily impressed; and these are surely requisites for
perfect manners; and, moreover, the courtesy that proceeds on the
ground of perfect equality is better than that which is a gracious
and benignant condescension,--as is the case with the manners of the
aristocracy of England.

An American, be it said, seldom turns his best side outermost abroad;
and an observer, who has had much opportunity of seeing the figure which
they make, in a foreign country, does not so much wonder that there
should be severe criticism on their manners as a people. I know not
exactly why, but all our imputed peculiarities--our nasal pronunciation,
our ungraceful idioms, our forthputtingness, our uncouth lack of
courtesy--do really seem to exist on a foreign shore; and even, perhaps,
to be heightened of malice prepense. The cold, unbelieving eye of
Englishmen, expectant of solecisms in manners, contributes to produce
the result which it looks for. Then the feeling of hostility and
defiance in the American must be allowed for; and partly, too, the real
existence of a different code of manners, founded on, and arising from,
different institutions; and also certain national peculiarities,
which may be intrinsically as good as English peculiarities; but being
different, and yet the whole result being just too nearly alike, and,
moreover, the English manners having the prestige of long establishment,
and furthermore our own manners being in a transition state between
those of old monarchies and what is proper to a new republic,--it
necessarily followed that the American, though really a man of
refinement and delicacy, is not just the kind of gentleman that the
English can fully appreciate. In cases where they do so, their
standard being different from ours, they do not always select for their
approbation the kind of man or manners whom we should judge the best;
we are perhaps apt to be a little too fine, a little too sedulously
polished, and of course too conscious of it,--a deadly social crime,
certainly.

CHAPTER XVII.

To return from this long discussion, the Warden took kindly, as we have
said, to Redclyffe, and thought him a miraculously good fellow, to have
come from the rude American republic. Hitherto, in the little time
that he had been in England, Redclyffe had received civil and even kind
treatment from the English with whom he had come casually in contact;
but still--perhaps partly from our Yankee narrowness and reserve--he
had felt, in the closest coming together, as if there were a naked sword
between the Englishman and him, as between the Arabian prince in the
tale and the princess whom he wedded; he felt as if that would be the
case even if he should love an Englishwoman; to such a distance, into
such an attitude of self-defence, does English self-complacency and
belief in England's superiority throw the stranger. In fact, in a
good-natured way, John Bull is always doubling his fist in a stranger's
face, and though it be good-natured, it does not always produce the most
amiable feeling.

The worthy Warden, being an Englishman, had doubtless the same kind of
feeling; doubtless, too, he thought ours a poor, distracted country,
perhaps prosperous for the moment, but as likely as not to be the scene
of anarchy five minutes hence; but being of so genial a nature, when he
came to see the amiableness of his young guest, and how deeply he was
impressed with England, all prejudice died away, and he loved him like a
treasure that he had found for himself, and valued him as if there were
something of his own in him. And so the old Warden's residence had never
before been so cheery as it was now; his bachelor life passed the more
pleasantly with this quiet, vivacious, yet not troublesomely restless
spirit beside him,--this eager, almost childish interest in everything
English, and yet this capacity to take independent views of things,
and sometimes, it might be, to throw a gleam of light even on things
appertaining to England. And so, the better they came to know one
another, the greater was their mutual liking.

"I fear I am getting too strong to burden you much longer," said
Redclyffe, this morning. "I have no pretence to be a patient now."

"Pooh! nonsense!" ejaculated the Warden. "It will not be safe to leave
you to yourself for at least a month to come. And I have half a dozen
excursions in a neighborhood of twenty miles, in which I mean to show
you what old England is, in a way that you would never find out for
yourself. Do not speak of going. This day, if you find yourself strong
enough, you shall go and look at an old village church."

"With all my heart," said Redclyffe.

They went, accordingly, walking slowly, in consequence of Redclyffe's
yet imperfect strength, along the highroad, which was overshadowed
with elms, that grew in beautiful shape and luxuriance in that part
of England, not with the slender, drooping, picturesque grace of a New
England elm, but more luxuriant, fuller of leaves, sturdier in limb. It
was a day which the Warden called fine, and which Redclyffe, at home,
would have thought to bode rain; though here he had learned that such
weather might continue for weeks together, with only a few raindrops all
the time. The road was in the finest condition, hard and dry.

They had not long emerged from the gateway of the Hospital,--at the
venerable front and gables of which Redclyffe turned to look with a
feeling as if it were his home,--when they heard the clatter of hoofs
behind them, and a gentleman on horseback rode by, paying a courteous
salute to the Warden as he passed. A groom in livery followed at a
little distance, and both rode roundly towards the village, whither the
Warden and his friend were going.

"Did you observe that man?" asked the Warden.

"Yes," said Redclyffe. "Is he an Englishman?"

"That is a pertinent question," replied the Warden, "but I scarcely know
how to answer it."

In truth, Redclyffe's question had been suggested by the appearance of
the mounted gentleman, who was a dark, thin man, with black hair, and a
black moustache and pointed beard setting off his sallow face, in
which the eyes had a certain pointed steeliness, which did not look
English,--whose eyes, methinks, are usually not so hard as those of
Americans or foreigners. Redclyffe, somehow or other, had fancied that
these not very pleasant eyes had been fixed in a marked way on himself,
a stranger, while at the same time his salute was evidently directed
towards the Warden.

"An Englishman,--why, no," continued the latter. "If you observe, he
does not even sit his horse like an Englishman, but in that absurd,
stiff continental way, as if a poker should get on horseback. Neither
has he an English face, English manners, nor English religion, nor
an English heart; nor, to sum up the whole, had he English birth.
Nevertheless, as fate would have it, he is the inheritor of a good old
English name, a fine patrimonial estate, and a very probable claim to an
old English title. This is Lord Braithwaite of Braithwaite Hall, who if
he can make his case good (and they say there is good prospect of it)
will soon be Lord Hinchbrooke."

"I hardly know why, but I should be sorry for it," said Redclyffe. "He
certainly is not English; and I have an odd sort of sympathy, which
makes me unwilling that English honors should be enjoyed by foreigners.
This, then, is the gentleman of Italian birth whom you have mentioned to
me, and of whom there is a slight mention in the County History."

"Yes," said the Warden. "There have been three descents of this
man's branch in Italy, and only one English mother in all that time.
Positively, I do not see an English trait in his face, and as little
in his manner. His civility is Italian, such as oftentimes, among his
countrymen, has offered a cup of poison to a guest, or insinuated the
stab of a stiletto into his heart."

"You are particularly bitter against this poor man," said Redclyffe,
laughing at the Warden's vehemence. "His appearance--and yet he is
a handsome man--is certainly not prepossessing; but unless it be
countersigned by something in his actual life, I should hardly think it
worth while to condemn him utterly."

"Well, well; you can forgive a little English prejudice," said the
Warden, a little ashamed. "But, in good earnest, the man has few or no
good traits, takes no interest in the country, dislikes our sky, our
earth, our people, is close and inhospitable, a hard landlord, and
whatever may be his good qualities, they are not such as flourish in
this soil and climate, or can be appreciated here." [Endnote: 1.]

"Has he children?" asked Redclyffe.

"They say so,--a family by an Italian wife, whom some, on the other
hand, pronounce to be no wife at all. His son is at a Catholic college
in France; his daughter in a convent there."

In talk like this they were drawing near the little rustic village
of Braithwaite, and saw, above a cloud of foliage, the small, low,
battlemented tower, the gray stones of which had probably been laid
a little after the Norman conquest. Approaching nearer, they passed
a thatched cottage or two, very plain and simple edifices, though
interesting to Redclyffe from their antique aspect, which denoted that
they were probably older than the settlement of his own country, and
might very likely have nursed children who had gone, more than two
centuries ago, to found the commonwealth of which he was a citizen. If
you considered them in one way, prosaically, they were ugly enough; but
then there were the old latticed windows, and there the thatch, which
was verdant with leek, and strange weeds, possessing a whole botanical
growth. And birds flew in and out, as if they had their homes there.
Then came a row of similar cottages, all joined on together, and each
with a little garden before it divided from its neighbors by a hedge,
now in full verdure. Redclyffe was glad to see some symptoms of natural
love of beauty here, for there were plants of box, cut into queer
shapes of birds, peacocks, etc., as if year after year had been spent
in bringing these vegetable sculptures to perfection. In one of the
gardens, moreover, the ingenious inhabitant had spent his leisure in
building grotto-work, of which the English are rather ludicrously fond,
on their little bits of lawn, and in building a miniature castle of
oyster-shells, where were seen turrets, ramparts, a frowning arched
gateway, and miniature cannon looking from the embrasures. A pleasanter
and better adornment were the homely household flowers, and a pleasant
sound, too, was the hum of bees, who had their home in several beehives,
and were making their honey among the flowers of the garden, or come
from afar, buzzing dreamily through the air, laden with honey that they
had found elsewhere. Fruit trees stood erect, or, in some instances,
were flattened out against the walls of cottages, looking somewhat like
hawks nailed _in terrorem_ against a barn door. The male members of this
little community were probably afield, with the exception of one or two
half-torpid great-grandsires, who [were] moving rheumatically about the
gardens, and some children not yet in breeches, who stared with stolid
eyes at the passers-by; but the good dames were busy within doors, where
Redclyffe had glimpses of their interior with its pavement of stone
flags. Altogether it seemed a comfortable settlement enough.

"Do you see that child yonder," observed the Warden, "creeping away from
the door, and displaying a vista of his petticoats as he does so? That
sturdy boy is the lineal heir of one of the oldest families in this part
of England,--though now decayed and fallen, as you may judge. So, you
see, with all our contrivances to keep up an aristocracy, there still is
change forever going on."

"There is something not agreeable, and something otherwise, in the
thought," replied Redclyffe. "What is the name of the old family, whose
representative is in such a case?"

"Moseby," said the Warden. "Their family residence stood within three
miles of Braithwaite Hall, but was taken down in the last century,
and its place supplied by a grand show-place, built by a Birmingham
manufacturer, who also originated here."

They kept onward from this outskirt of the village, and soon, passing
over a little rising ground, and descending now into a hollow came to
the new portion of it, clustered around its gray Norman church, one side
of the tower of which was covered with ivy, that was carefully kept, the
Warden said, from climbing to the battlements, on account of some
old prophecy that foretold that the tower would fall, if ever the ivy
mantled over its top. Certainly, however, there seemed little likelihood
that the square, low mass would fall, unless by external violence, in
less than as many ages as it had already stood.

Redclyffe looked at the old tower and little adjoining edifice with an
interest that attached itself to every separate, moss-grown stone; but
the Warden, like most Englishmen, was at once amazed and wearied with
the American's enthusiasm for this spot, which to him was uninteresting
for the very reason that made it most interesting to Redclyffe, because
it had stood there such a weary while. It was too common an object to
excite in his mind, as it did in Redclyffe's, visions of the long
ago time when it was founded, when mass was first said there, and the
glimmer of torches at the altar was seen through the vista of that
broad-browed porch; and of all the procession of villagers that had
since gone in and come out during nine hundred years, in their varying
costume and fashion, but yet--and this was the strongest and most
thrilling part of the idea--all, the very oldest of them, bearing a
resemblance of feature, the kindred, the family likeness, to those who
died yesterday,--to those who still went thither to worship; and that
all the grassy and half-obliterated graves around had held those who
bore the same traits.

In front of the church was a little green, on which stood a very ancient
yew tree, [Endnote: 2] all the heart of which seemed to have been eaten
away by time, so that a man could now creep into the trunk, through a
wide opening, and, looking upward, see another opening to the sky.

"That tree," observed the Warden, "is well worth the notice of such an
enthusiastic lover of old things; though I suppose aged trees may be
the one antiquity that you do not value, having them by myriads in your
primeval forests. But then the interest of this tree consists greatly
in what your trees have not,--in its long connection with men and the
goings of men. Some of its companions were made into bows for Harold's
archers. This tree is of unreckonable antiquity; so old, that in
a record of the time of Edward IV. it is styled the yew tree of
Braithwaite Green. That carries it back to Norman times, truly. It was
in comparatively modern times when it served as a gallows for one of
James II.'s bloodthirsty judges to hang his victims on after Monmouth's
rebellion."

On one side of this yew was a certain structure which Redclyffe did
not recognize as anything that he had before seen, but soon guessed
its purpose; though, from appearances, it seemed to have been very
long since it had served that purpose. It was a ponderous old oaken
framework, six or seven feet high, so contrived that a heavy cross-piece
shut down over another, leaving two round holes; in short, it was a pair
of stocks, in which, I suppose, hundreds of vagrants and petty criminals
had sat of old, but which now appeared to be merely a matter of
curiosity.

"This excellent old machine," said the Warden, "had been lying in a
rubbish chamber of the church tower for at least a century; when the
clerk, who is a little of an antiquarian, unearthed it, and I advised
him to set it here, where it used to stand;--not with any idea of its
being used (though there is as much need of it now as ever), but that
the present age may see what comforts it has lost."

They sat down a few moments on the circular seat, and looked at the
pretty scene of this quiet little village, clustered round the old
church as a centre; a collection of houses, mostly thatched, though
there were one or two, with rather more pretension, that had roofs of
red tiles. Some of them were stone cottages, whitewashed, but the larger
edifices had timber frames, filled in with brick and plaster, which
seemed to have been renewed in patches, and to be a frailer and less
durable material than the old oak of their skeletons. They were gabled,
with lattice windows, and picturesquely set off with projecting
stones, and many little patchwork additions, such as, in the course of
generations, the inhabitants had found themselves to need. There was not
much commerce, apparently, in this little village, there seeming to be
only one shop, with some gingerbread, penny whistles, ballads, and such
matters, displayed in the window; and there, too, across the little
green, opposite the church, was the village alehouse, with its bench
under the low projecting eaves, with a Teniers scene of two wayfaring
yeomen drinking a pot of beer and smoking their pipes.

With Redclyffe's Yankee feelings, there was something sad to think how
the generations had succeeded one another, over and over, in innumerable
succession, in this little spot, being born here, living, dying, lying
down among their fathers' dust, and forthwith getting up again, as it
were, and recommencing the same meaningless round, and really bringing
nothing to pass; for probably the generation of to-day, in so secluded
and motionless a place as this, had few or no ideas in advance of their
ancestors of five centuries ago. It seems not worth while that more than
one generation of them should have existed. Even in dress, with their
smock frocks and breeches, they were just like their fathers. The
stirring blood of the new land,--where no man dwells in his father's
house,--where no man thinks of dying in his birthplace,--awoke within
him, and revolted at the thought; and, as connected with it, revolted at
all the hereditary pretensions which, since his stay here, had exercised
such an influence over the fanciful part of his nature. In another mood,
the village might have seemed a picture of rural peace, which it would
have been worth while to give up ambition to enjoy; now, as his warmer
impulse stirred, it was a weariness to think of. The new American was
stronger in him than the hereditary Englishman.

"I should go mad of it!" exclaimed he aloud.

He started up impulsively, to the amazement of his companion, who of
course could not comprehend what seemed so to have stung his American
friend. As they passed the tree, on the other side of its huge trunk,
they saw a young woman, sitting on that side of it, and sketching,
apparently, the church tower, with the old Elizabethan vicarage that
stood near it, with a gate opening into the churchyard, and much
embowered and ivy-hung.

"Ah, Miss Cheltenham," said the Warden. "I am glad to see that you have
taken the old church in hand, for it is one of the prettiest rustic
churches in England, and as well worthy as any to be engraved on a sheet
of note-paper or put into a portfolio. Will you let my friend and me see
your sketch?"

The Warden had made his request with rather more freedom than perhaps he
would to a lady whom he considered on a level with himself, though with
perfect respect, that being considered; and Redclyffe, looking at the
person, saw that it was the same of whose face he had had a glimpse in
the looking-glass, in the old palmer's chamber.

"No, Doctor Hammond," said the young lady, with a respectful sort of
frankness, "you must excuse me. I am no good artist, and am but jotting
down the old church because I like it."

"Well, well, as you please," said the Warden; and whispered aside to
Redclyffe, "A girl's sketchbook is seldom worth looking at. But now,
Miss Cheltenham, I am about to give my American friend here a lecture on
gargoyles, and other peculiarities of sacred Gothic architecture; and
if you will honor me with your attention, I should be glad to find my
audience increased by one."

So the young lady arose, and Redclyffe, considering the Warden's
allusion to him as a sort of partial introduction, bowed to her, and she
responded with a cold, reserved, yet not unpleasant sort of courtesy.
They went towards the church porch, and, looking in at the old stone
bench on each side of the interior, the Warden showed them the hacks
of the swords of the Roundheads, when they took it by storm. Redclyffe,
mindful of the old graveyard on the edge of which he had spent his
childhood, began to look at this far more antique receptacle, expecting
to find there many ancient tombstones, perhaps of contemporaries or
predecessors of the founders of his country. In this, however, he was
disappointed, at least in a great measure; for the persons buried in the
churchyard were probably, for the most part, of a humble rank in life,
such as were not so ambitious as to desire a monument of any kind, but
were content to let their low earth-mounds subside into the level, where
their memory had waxed so faint that none among the survivors could
point out the spot, or cared any longer about knowing it; while in other
cases, where a monument of red freestone, or even of hewn granite, had
been erected, the English climate had forthwith set to work to gnaw away
the inscriptions; so that in fifty years--in a time that would have left
an American tombstone as fresh as if just cut--it was quite impossible
to make out the record. Their superiors, meanwhile, were sleeping
less enviably in dismal mouldy and dusty vaults, instead of under the
daisies. Thus Redclyffe really found less antiquity here, than in the
graveyard which might almost be called his natal spot.

When he said something to this effect, the Warden nodded.

"Yes," said he, "and, in truth, we have not much need of inscriptions
for these poor people. All good families--every one almost, with
any pretensions to respectable station, has his family or individual
recognition within the church, or upon its walls; or some of them you
see on tombs on the outside. As for our poorer friends here, they are
content, as they may well be, to swell and subside, like little billows
of mortality, here on the outside."

"And for my part," said Redclyffe, "if there were anything particularly
desirable on either side, I should like best to sleep under this lovely
green turf, with the daisies strewn over me by Nature herself, and
whatever other homely flowers any friend might choose to add."

"And, Doctor Hammond," said the young woman, "we see by this gravestone
that sometimes a person of humble rank may happen to be commemorated,
and that Nature--in this instance at least--seems to take especial pains
and pleasure to preserve the record."

She indicated a flat gravestone, near the porch, which time had indeed
beautified in a singular way, for there was cut deep into it a name and
date, in old English characters, very deep it must originally have been;
and as if in despair of obliterating it, Time had taken the kindlier
method of filling up the letters with moss; so that now, high embossed
in loveliest green, was seen the name "Richard Oglethorpe 1613";--green,
and flourishing, and beautiful, like the memory of a good man. The
inscription originally seemed to have contained some twenty lines, which
might have been poetry, or perhaps a prose eulogy, or perhaps the simple
record of the buried person's life; but all this, having been done
in fainter and smaller letters, was now so far worn away as to be
illegible; nor had they ever been deep enough to be made living in moss,
like the rest of the inscription.

"How tantalizing," remarked Redclyffe, "to see the verdant shine of this
name, impressed upon us as something remarkable--and nothing else. I
cannot but think that there must be something worth remembering about
a man thus distinguished. When two hundred years have taken all these
natural pains to illustrate and emblazon 'Richard Oglethorpe 1613.' Ha!
I surely recollect that name. It haunts me somehow, as if it had been
familiar of old."

"And me," said the young lady.

"It was an old name, hereabouts," observed the Warden, "but has been
long extinct,--a cottage name, not a gentleman's. I doubt not that
Oglethorpes sleep in many of these undistinguished graves."

Redclyffe did not much attend to what his friend said, his attention
being attracted to the tone--to something in the tone of the young lady,
and also to her coincidence in his remark that the name appealed to some
early recollection. He had been taxing his memory, to tell him when and
how the name had become familiar to him; and he now remembered that it
had occurred in the old Doctor's story of the Bloody Footstep, told to
him and Elsie, so long ago. [Endnote: 3] To him and Elsie! It struck
him--what if it were possible?--but he knew it was not--that the young
lady had a remembrance also of the fact, and that she, after so many
years, were mingling her thoughts with his. As this fancy recurred to
him, he endeavored to get a glimpse of her face, and while he did so she
turned it upon him. It was a quick, sensitive face, that did not seem
altogether English; he would rather have imagined it American; but at
all events he could not recognize it as one that he had seen before,
and a thousand fantasies died within him as, in his momentary glance, he
took in the volume of its contour.

CHAPTER XVIII.

After the two friends had parted from the young lady, they passed
through the village, and entered the park gate of Braithwaite Hall,
pursuing a winding road through its beautiful scenery, which realized
all that Redclyffe had read or dreamed about the perfect beauty of
these sylvan creations, with the clumps of trees, or sylvan oaks,
picturesquely disposed. To heighten the charm, they saw a herd of deer
reposing, who, on their appearance, rose from their recumbent position,
and began to gaze warily at the strangers; then, tossing their horns,
they set off on a stampede, but only swept round, and settled down not
far from where they were. Redclyffe looked with great interest at these
deer, who were at once wild and civilized; retaining a kind of free
forest citizenship, while yet they were in some sense subject to man. It
seemed as if they were a link between wild nature and tame; as if they
could look back, in their long recollections, through a vista, into the
times when England's forests were as wild as those of America, though
now they were but a degree more removed from domesticity than cattle,
and took their food in winter from the hand of man, and in summer
reposed upon his lawns. This seemed the last touch of that delightful
conquered and regulated wildness, which English art has laid upon the
whole growth of English nature, animal or vegetable.

"There is nothing really wild in your whole island," he observed to the
Warden. "I have a sensation as if somebody knew, and had cultivated and
fostered, and set out in its proper place, every tree that grows; as if
somebody had patted the heads of your wildest animals and played with
them. It is very delightful to me, for the present; and yet, I think, in
the course of time, I should feel the need for something genuine, as
it were,--something that had not the touch and breath of man upon it. I
suppose even your skies are modified by the modes of human life that are
going on beneath it. London skies, of course, are so; but the breath of
a great people, to say nothing of its furnace vapors and hearth-smokes,
make the sky other than it was a thousand years ago."

"I believe we English have a feeling like this occasionally," replied
the Warden, "and it is from that, partly, that we must account for our
adventurousness into other regions, especially for our interest in what
is wild and new. In your own forests, now, and prairies, I fancy we find
a charm that Americans do not. In the sea, too, and therefore we are
yachters. For my part, however, I have grown to like Nature a little
smoothed down, and enriched; less gaunt and wolfish than she would be if
left to herself."

"Yes; I feel that charm too," said Redclyffe. "But yet life would be
slow and heavy, methinks, to see nothing but English parks."

Continuing their course through the noble clumps of oaks, they by and
by had a vista of the distant hall itself. It was one of the old English
timber and plaster houses, many of which are of unknown antiquity; as
was the case with a portion of this house, although other portions had
been renewed, repaired, or added, within a century. It had, originally,
the Warden said, stood all round an enclosed courtyard, like the great
houses of the Continent; but now one side of the quadrangle had long
been removed, and there was only a front, with two wings; the beams of
old oak being picked out with black, and three or four gables in a line
forming the front, while the wings seemed to be stone. It was the timber
portion that was most ancient. A clock was on the midmost gable, and
pointed now towards one o'clock. The whole scene impressed Redclyffe,
not as striking, but as an abode of ancient peace, where generation
after generation of the same family had lived, each making the most of
life, because the life of each successive dweller there was eked out
with the lives of all who had hitherto lived there, and had in it
equally those lives which were to come afterwards; so that there was
a rare and successful contrivance for giving length, fulness, body,
substance, to this thin and frail matter of human life. And, as life was
so rich in comprehensiveness, the dwellers there made the most of it for
the present and future, each generation contriving what it could to add
to the cosiness, the comfortableness, the grave, solid respectability,
the sylvan beauty, of the house with which they seemed to be connected
both before and after death. The family had its home there; not merely
the individual. Ancient shapes, that had apparently gone to the family
tomb, had yet a right by family hearth and in family hall; nor did they
come thither cold and shivering, and diffusing dim ghostly terrors, and
repulsive shrinkings, and death in life; but in warm, genial attributes,
making this life now passing more dense as it were, by adding all the
substance of their own to it. Redclyffe could not compare this abode,
and the feelings that it aroused, to the houses of his own country; poor
tents of a day, inns of a night, where nothing was certain, save that
the family of him who built it would not dwell here, even if he himself
should have the bliss to die under the roof, which, with absurdest
anticipations, he had built for his posterity. Posterity! An American
can have none.

"All this sort of thing is beautiful; the family institution was
beautiful in its day," ejaculated he, aloud, to himself, not to his
companion; "but it is a thing of the past. It is dying out in England;
and as for ourselves, we never had it. Something better will come up;
but as for this, it is past."

"That is a sad thing to say," observed the Warden, by no means
comprehending what was passing in his friend's mind. "But if you wish
to view the interior of the Hall, we will go thither; for, harshly as
I have spoken of the owner, I suppose he has English feeling enough to
give us lunch and show us the old house of his forefathers."

"Not at present, if you please," replied Redclyffe. "I am afraid of
destroying my delightful visionary idea of the house by coming too near
it. Before I leave this part of the country, I should be glad to ramble
over the whole of it, but not just now."

While Redclyffe was still enjoying the frank hospitality of his new
friend, a rather marked event occurred in his life; yet not so important
in reality as it seemed to his English friend.

A large letter was delivered to him, bearing the official seal of the
United States, and the indorsement of the State Department; a very
important-looking document, which could not but add to the importance of
the recipient in the eyes of any Englishman, accustomed as they are
to bow down before any seal of government. Redclyffe opened it rather
coolly, being rather loath to renew any of his political remembrances,
now that he was in peace; or to think of the turmoil of modern and
democratic politics, here in this quietude of gone-by ages and customs.
The contents, however, took him by surprise; nor did he know whether to
be pleased or not.

The official package, in short, contained an announcement that he had
been appointed by the President, by and with the advice of the Senate,
to one of the Continental missions, usually esteemed an object of
considerable ambition to any young man in politics; so that, if
consistent with his own pleasure, he was now one of the Diplomatic
Corps, a Minister, and representative of his country. On first
considering the matter, Redclyffe was inclined to doubt whether this
honor had been obtained for him altogether by friendly aid, though it
did happen to have much in it that might suit his half-formed purpose of
remaining long abroad; but with an eye already rendered somewhat oblique
by political practice, he suspected that a political rival--a rival,
though of his own party--had been exerting himself to provide an
inducement for Redclyffe to leave the local field to him; while he
himself should take advantage of the vacant field, and his rival be thus
insidiously, though honorably, laid on the shelf, whence if he should
try to remove himself a few years hence the shifting influences of
American politics would be likely enough to thwart him; so that, for the
sake of being a few years nominally somebody, he might in fine come back
to his own country and find himself permanently nobody. But Redclyffe
had already sufficiently begun to suspect that he lacked some qualities
that a politician ought to have, and without which a political life,
whether successful or otherwise, is sure to be a most irksome one: some
qualities he lacked, others he had, both almost equally an obstacle.
When he communicated the offer, therefore, to his friend, the Warden, it
was with the remark that he believed he should accept it.

"Accept it?" cried the Warden, opening his eyes. "I should think so,
indeed! Why, it puts you above the level of the highest nobility of
the Court to which you are accredited; simple republican as you are, it
gives you rank with the old blood and birth of Europe. Accept it? By all
means; and I will come and see you at your court."

"Nothing is more different between England and America," said Redclyffe,
"than the different way in which the citizen of either country looks
at official station. To an Englishman, a commission, of whatever kind,
emanating from his sovereign, brings apparently a gratifying sense of
honor; to an American, on the contrary, it offers really nothing of
the kind. He ceases to be a sovereign,--an atom of sovereignty, at all
events,--and stoops to be a servant. If I accept this mission, honorable
as you think it, I assure you I shall not feel myself quite the man I
have hitherto been; although there is no obstacle in the way of party
obligations or connections to my taking it, if I please."

"I do not well understand this," quoth the good Warden. "It is one of
the promises of Scripture to the wise man, that he shall stand before
kings, and that this embassy will enable you to do. No man--no man of
your country surely--is more worthy to do so; so pray accept."

"I think I shall," said Redclyffe.

Much as the Warden had seemed to affectionize Redclyffe hitherto, the
latter could not but be sensible, thereafter, of a certain deference in
his friend towards him, which he would fain have got rid of, had it been
in his power. However, there was still the same heartiness under it all;
and after a little he seemed, in some degree, to take Redclyffe's
own view of the matter;--namely, that, being so temporary as these
republican distinctions are, they really do not go skin deep, have no
reality in them, and that the sterling quality of the man, be it higher
or lower, is nowise altered by it;--an apothegm that is true even of
an hereditary nobility, and still more so of our own Honorables and
Excellencies. However, the good Warden was glad of his friend's dignity,
and perhaps, too, a little glad that this high fortune had befallen one
whom he chanced to be entertaining under his roof. As it happened, there
was an opportunity which might be taken advantage of to celebrate the
occasion; at least, to make it known to the English world so far as the
extent of the county. [Endnote: 1.]

It was an hereditary custom for the warden of Braithwaite Hospital,
once a year, to give a grand dinner to the nobility and gentry of the
neighborhood; and to this end a bequest had been made by one of the
former squires or lords of Braithwaite which would of itself suffice
to feed forty or fifty Englishmen with reasonable sumptuousness. The
present Warden, being a gentleman of private fortune, was accustomed to
eke the limited income, devoted for this purpose, with such additions
from his own resources as brought the rude and hearty hospitality
contemplated by the first founder on a par with modern refinements of
gourmandism. The banquet was annually given in the fine old hall where
James II. had feasted; and on some of these occasions the Warden's table
had been honored with illustrious guests; especially when any of them
happened to be wanting an opportunity to come before the public in an
after-dinner speech. Just at present there was no occasion of that sort;
and the good Warden fancied that he might give considerable _éclat_ to
his hereditary feast by bringing forward the young American envoy, a
distinguished and eloquent man, to speak on the well-worn topic of the
necessity of friendly relations between England and America.

"You are eloquent, I doubt not, my young friend?" inquired he.

"Why, no," answered Redclyffe, modestly.

"Ah, yes, I know it," returned the Warden. "If one have all the natural
prerequisites of eloquence; a quick sensibility, ready thought, apt
expression, a good voice--and not making its way into the world through
your nose either, as they say most of your countrymen's voices do. You
shall make the crack speech at my dinner; and so strengthen the bonds
of good fellowship between our two countries, that there shall be no
question of war for at least six months to come."

Accordingly, the preparations for this stately banquet went on with
great spirit; and the Warden exhorted Redclyffe to be thinking of some
good topics for his international speech; but the young man laughed it
off, and told his friend that he thought the inspiration of the moment,
aided by the good old wine which the Warden had told him of, as among
the treasures of the Hospital, would perhaps serve him better than any
elaborate preparation.

Redclyffe, being not even yet strong, used to spend much time, when the
day chanced to be pleasant, (which was oftener than his preconceptions
of English weather led him to expect,) in the garden behind the Warden's
house. It was an extensive one, and apparently as antique as the
foundation of the establishment; and during all these years it had
probably been growing richer and richer. Here were flowers of ancient
race, and some that had been merely field or wayside flowers when first
they came into the garden; but by long cultivation and hereditary care,
instead of dying out, they had acquired a new richness and beauty, so
that you would scarcely recognize the daisy or the violet. Roses too,
there were, which Doctor Hammond said had been taken from those white
and red rose-trees in the Temple Gardens, whence the partisans of York
and Lancaster had plucked their fatal badges. With these, there were
all the modern and far-fetched flowers from America, the East, and
elsewhere; even the prairie flowers and the California blossoms were
represented here; for one of the brethren had horticultural tastes, and
was permitted freely to exercise them there. The antique character of
the garden was preserved, likewise, by the alleys of box, a part of
which had been suffered to remain, and was now grown to a great height
and density, so as to make impervious green walls. There were also
yew trees clipped into strange shapes of bird and beast, and uncouth
heraldic figures, among which of course the leopard's head grinned
triumphant; and as for fruit, the high garden wall was lined with pear
trees, spread out flat against it, where they managed to produce a cold,
flavorless fruit, a good deal akin to cucumbers.

Here, in these genial old arbors, Redclyffe used to recline in the
sweet, mild summer weather, basking in the sun, which was seldom too
warm to make its full embrace uncomfortable; and it seemed to him, with
its fertility, with its marks everywhere of the quiet long-bestowed care
of man, the sweetest and cosiest seclusion he had ever known; and two
or three times a day, when he heard the screech of the railway train,
rushing on towards distant London, it impressed him still more with a
sense of safe repose here.

Not unfrequently he here met the white-bearded palmer in whose chamber
he had found himself, as if conveyed thither by enchantment, when he
first came to the Hospital. The old man was not by any means of
the garrulous order; and yet he seemed full of thoughts, full of
reminiscences, and not disinclined to the company of Redclyffe. In fact,
the latter sometimes flattered himself that a tendency for his society
was one of the motives that brought him to the garden; though the amount
of their intercourse, after all, was not so great as to warrant the
idea of any settled purpose in so doing. Nevertheless, they talked
considerably; and Redclyffe could easily see that the old man had
been an extensive traveller, and had perhaps occupied situations far
different from his present one, and had perhaps been a struggler
in troubled waters before he was drifted into the retirement where
Redclyffe found him. He was fond of talking about the unsuspected
relationship that must now be existing between many families in England
and unknown consanguinity in the new world, where, perhaps, really the
main stock of the family tree was now existing, and with a new spirit
and life, which the representative growth here in England had lost by
too long continuance in one air and one mode of life. For history and
observation proved that all people--and the English people by no means
less than others--needed to be transplanted, or somehow renewed, every
few generations; so that, according to this ancient philosopher's
theory, it would be good for the whole people of England now, if
it could at once be transported to America, where its fatness, its
sleepiness, its too great beefiness, its preponderant animal character,
would be rectified by a different air and soil; and equally good, on the
other hand, for the whole American people to be transplanted back to the
original island, where their nervousness might be weighted with heavier
influences, where their little women might grow bigger, where their
thin, dry men might get a burden of flesh and good stomachs, where their
children might, with the air, draw in a reverence for age, forms, and
usage.

Redclyffe listened with complacency to these speculations, smiling at
the thought of such an exodus as would take place, and the reciprocal
dissatisfaction which would probably be the result. But he had greater
pleasure in drawing out some of the old gentleman's legendary lore, some
of which, whether true or not, was very curious. [Endnote: 2.]

As Redclyffe sat one day watching the old man in the garden, he could
not help being struck by the scrupulous care with which he attended
to the plants; it seemed to him that there was a sense of justice,--of
desiring to do exactly what was right in the matter, not favoring one
plant more than another, and doing all he could for each. His progress,
in consequence, was so slow, that in an hour, while Redclyffe was off
and on looking at him, he had scarcely done anything perceptible. Then
he was so minute; and often, when he was on the point of leaving one
thing to take up another, some small neglect that he saw or fancied
called him back again, to spend other minutes on the same task. He
was so full of scruples. It struck Redclyffe that this was conscience,
morbid, sick, a despot in trifles, looking so closely into life that it
permitted nothing to be done. The man might once have been strong and
able, but by some unhealthy process of his life he had ceased to be so
now. Nor did any happy or satisfactory result appear to come from these
painfully wrought efforts; he still seemed to know that he had left
something undone in doing too much in another direction. Here was a lily
that had been neglected, while he paid too much attention to a rose; he
had set his foot on a violet; he had grubbed up, in his haste, a little
plant that he mistook for a weed, but that he now suspected was an herb
of grace. Grieved by such reflections as these, he heaved a deep sigh,
almost amounting to a groan, and sat down on the little stool that he
carried with him in his weeding, resting his face in his hands.

Redclyffe deemed that he might be doing the old man a good service by
interrupting his melancholy labors; so he emerged from the opposite door
of the summer-house, and came along the adjoining walk with somewhat
heavy footsteps, in order that the palmer might have warning of his
approach without any grounds to suppose that he had been watched
hitherto. Accordingly, when he turned into the other alley, he found the
old man sitting erect on his stool, looking composed, but still sad, as
was his general custom.

"After all your wanderings and experience," said he, "I observe that
you come back to the original occupation of cultivating a garden,--the
innocentest of all."

"Yes, so it would seem," said the old man; "but somehow or other I do
not find peace in this."

"These plants and shrubs," returned Redclyffe, "seem at all events to
recognize the goodness of your rule, so far as it has extended over
them. See how joyfully they take the sun; how clear [they are] from all
these vices that lie scattered round, in the shape of weeds. It is a
lovely sight, and I could almost fancy a quiet enjoyment in the plants
themselves, which they have no way of making us aware of, except by
giving out a fragrance."

"Ah! how infinitely would that idea increase man's responsibility," said
the old palmer, "if, besides man and beast, we should find it necessary
to believe that there is also another set of beings dependent for their
happiness on our doing, or leaving undone, what might have effect on
them!"

"I question," said Redclyffe, smiling, "whether their pleasurable or
painful experiences can be so keen, that we need trouble our consciences
much with regard to what we do, merely as it affects them. So highly
cultivated a conscience as that would be a nuisance to one's self and
one's fellows."

"You say a terrible thing," rejoined the old man. "Can conscience be too
much alive in us? is not everything however trifling it seems, an item
in the great account, which it is of infinite importance therefore to
have right? A terrible thing is that you have said."

"That may be," said Redclyffe; "but it is none the less certain to me,
that the efficient actors--those who mould the world--are the persons
in whom something else is developed more strongly than conscience. There
must be an invincible determination to effect something; it may be
set to work in the right direction, but after that it must go onward,
trampling down small obstacles--small considerations of right and
wrong--as a great rock, thundering down a hillside, crushes a thousand
sweet flowers, and ploughs deep furrows in the innocent hillside."

As Redclyffe gave vent to this doctrine, which was not naturally his,
but which had been the inculcation of a life, hitherto devoted to
politics, he was surprised to find how strongly sensible he became of
the ugliness and indefensibleness of what he said. He felt as if he were
speaking under the eye of Omniscience, and as if every word he said were
weighed, and its emptiness detected, by an unfailing intelligence. He
had thought that he had volumes to say about the necessity of consenting
not to do right in all matters minutely, for the sake of getting out an
available and valuable right as the whole; but there was something that
seemed to tie his tongue. Could it be the quiet gaze of this old man,
so unpretending, so humble, so simple in aspect? He could not tell, only
that he faltered, and finally left his speech in the midst.

But he was surprised to find how he had to struggle against a certain
repulsion within himself to the old man. He seemed so nonsensical,
interfering with everybody's right in the world; so mischievous,
standing there and shutting out the possibility of action. It seemed
well to trample him down; to put him out of the way--no matter
how--somehow. It gave him, he thought, an inkling of the way in which
this poor old man had made himself odious to his kind, by opposing
himself, inevitably, to what was bad in man, chiding it by his very
presence, accepting nothing false. You must either love him utterly,
or hate him utterly; for he could not let you alone. Redclyffe, being a
susceptible man, felt this influence in the strongest way; for it was
as if there was a battle within him, one party pulling, wrenching him
towards the old man, another wrenching him away, so that, by the agony
of the contest, he felt disposed to end it by taking flight, and never
seeing the strange individual again. He could well enough conceive how a
brutal nature, if capable of receiving his influence at all, might find
it so intolerable that it must needs get rid of him by violence,--by
taking his blood if necessary.

All these feelings were but transitory, however; they swept across him
like a wind, and then he looked again at the old man and saw only his
simplicity, his unworldliness,--saw little more than the worn and feeble
individual in the Hospital garb, leaning on his staff; and then turning
again with a gentle sigh to weed in the garden. And then Redclyffe
went away, in a state of disturbance for which he could not account to
himself.

CHAPTER XIX.

High up in the old carved roof, meanwhile, the spiders of centuries
still hung their flaunting webs with a profusion that old Doctor
Grimshawe would have been ravished to see; but even this was to be
remedied, for one day, on looking in, Redclyffe found the great hall dim
with floating dust, and down through it came great floating masses of
cobweb, out of which the old Doctor would have undertaken to regenerate
the world; and he saw, dimly aloft, men on ladders sweeping away these
accumulations of years, and breaking up the haunts and residences of
hereditary spiders.

The stately old hall had been in process of cleaning and adapting to the
banquet purposes of the nineteenth century, which it was accustomed
to subserve, in so proud a way, in the sixteenth. It was, in the first
place, well swept and cleansed; the painted glass windows were cleansed
from dust, and several panes, which had been unfortunately broken and
filled with common glass, were filled in with colored panes, which the
Warden had picked up somewhere in his antiquarian researches. They were
not, to be sure, just what was wanted; a piece of a saint, from some
cathedral window, supplying what was lacking of the gorgeous purple of
a mediæval king; but the general effect was rich and good, whenever the
misty English atmosphere supplied sunshine bright enough to pervade it.
Tapestry, too, from antique looms, faded, but still gorgeous, was
hung upon the walls. Some suits of armor, that hung beneath the festal
gallery, were polished till the old battered helmets and pierced
breastplates sent a gleam like that with which they had flashed across
the battle-fields of old. [Endnote: 1.]

So now the great day of the Warden's dinner had arrived; and, as may be
supposed, there were fiery times in the venerable old kitchen. The cook,
according to ancient custom, concocted many antique dishes, such as used
to be set before kings and nobles; dainties that might have called the
dead out of their graves; combinations of ingredients that had ceased
to be put together for centuries; historic dishes, which had long, long
ceased to be in the list of revels. Then there was the stalwart English
cheer of the sirloin, and the round; there were the vast plum-puddings,
the juicy mutton, the venison; there was the game, now just
in season,--the half-tame wild fowl of English covers, the
half-domesticated wild deer of English parks, the heathcock from
the far-off hills of Scotland, and one little prairie hen, and some
canvas-back ducks--obtained, Heaven knows how, in compliment to
Redclyffe--from his native shores. O, the old jolly kitchen! how rich
the flavored smoke that went up its vast chimney! how inestimable the
atmosphere of steam that was diffused through it! How did the old men
peep into it, even venture across the threshold, braving the hot wrath
of the cook and his assistants, for the sake of imbuing themselves
with these rich and delicate flavors, receiving them in as it were
spiritually; for, received through the breath and in the atmosphere, it
was really a spiritual enjoyment. The ghosts of ancient epicures seemed,
on that day and the few preceding ones, to haunt the dim passages,
snuffing in with shadowy nostrils the rich vapors, assuming visibility
in the congenial medium, almost becoming earthly again in the strength
of their earthly longings for one other feast such as they used to
enjoy.

Nor is it to be supposed that it was only these antique dainties that
the Warden provided for his feast. No; if the cook, the cultured and
recondite old cook, who had accumulated within himself all that his
predecessors knew for centuries,--if he lacked anything of modern
fashion and improvement, he had supplied his defect by temporary
assistance from a London club; and the bill of fare was provided with
dishes that Soyer would not have harshly criticised. The ethereal
delicacy of modern taste, the nice adjustment of flowers, the French
style of cookery, was richly attended to; and the list was long of
dishes with fantastic names, fish, fowl, and flesh; and _entremets_, and
"sweets," as the English call them, and sugared cates, too numerous to
think of.

The wines we will not take upon ourselves to enumerate; but the juice,
then destined to be quaffed, was in part the precious vintages that had
been broached half a century ago, and had been ripening ever since;
the rich and dry old port, so unlovely to the natural palate that it
requires long English seasoning to get it down; the sherry, imported
before these modern days of adulteration; some claret, the Warden said
of rarest vintage; some Burgundy, of which it was the quality to warm
the blood and genialize existence for three days after it was drunk.
Then there was a rich liquid contributed to this department by Redclyffe
himself; for, some weeks since, when the banquet first loomed in the
distance, he had (anxious to evince his sense of the Warden's kindness)
sent across the ocean for some famous Madeira which he had inherited
from the Doctor, and never tasted yet. This, together with some of the
Western wines of America, had arrived, and was ready to be broached.

The Warden tested these modern wines, and recognized a new flavor,
but gave it only a moderate approbation; for, in truth, an elderly
Englishman has not a wide appreciation of wines, nor loves new things
in this kind more than in literature or life. But he tasted the Madeira,
too, and underwent an ecstasy, which was only alleviated by the dread of
gout, which he had an idea that this wine must bring on,--and truly,
if it were so splendid a wine as he pronounced it, some pain ought to
follow as the shadow of such a pleasure.

As it was a festival of antique date, the dinner hour had been fixed
earlier than is usual at such stately banquets; namely, at six o'clock,
which was long before the dusky hour at which Englishmen love best to
dine. About that period, the carriages drove into the old courtyard of
the Hospital in great abundance; blocking up, too, the ancient portal,
and remaining in a line outside. Carriages they were with armorial
bearings, family coaches in which came Englishmen in their black coats
and white neckcloths, elderly, white-headed, fresh-colored, squat; not
beautiful, certainly, nor particularly dignified, nor very well dressed,
nor with much of an imposing air, but yet, somehow or other, producing
an effect of force, respectability, reliableness, trust, which is
probably deserved, since it is invariably experienced. Cold they were
in deportment, and looked coldly on the stranger, who, on his part, drew
himself up with an extra haughtiness and reserve, and felt himself in
the midst of his enemies, and more as if he were going to do battle
than to sit down to a friendly banquet. The Warden introduced him, as an
American diplomatist, to one or two of the gentlemen, who regarded him
forbiddingly, as Englishmen do before dinner.

Not long after Redclyffe had entered the reception-room, which was but
shortly before the hour appointed for the dinner, there was another
arrival betokened by the clatter of hoofs and grinding wheels in the
courtyard; and then entered a gentleman of different mien from the
bluff, ruddy, simple-minded, yet worldly Englishmen around him. He was a
tall, dark man, with a black moustache and almost olive skin, a slender,
lithe figure, a flexible face, quick, flashing, mobile. His deportment
was graceful; his dress, though it seemed to differ in little or
nothing from that of the gentlemen in the room, had yet a grace and
picturesqueness in his mode of wearing it. He advanced to the Warden,
who received him with distinction, and yet, Redclyffe fancied, not
exactly with cordiality. It seemed to Redclyffe that the Warden looked
round, as if with the purpose of presenting Redclyffe to this gentleman,
but he himself, from some latent reluctance, had turned away and
entered, into conversation with one of the other gentlemen, who said
now, looking at the new-comer, "Are you acquainted with this last
arrival?"

"Not at all," said Redclyffe. "I know Lord Braithwaite by sight, indeed,
but have had no introduction. He is a man, certainly, of distinguished
appearance."

"Why, pretty well," said the gentleman, "but un-English, as also are his
manners. It is a pity to see an old English family represented by such
a person. Neither he, his father, nor grandfather was born among us; he
has far more Italian blood than enough to drown the slender stream of
Anglo-Saxon and Norman. His modes of life, his prejudices, his estates,
his religion, are unlike our own; and yet here he is in the position of
an old English gentleman, possibly to be a peer. You, whose nationality
embraces that of all the world, cannot, I suppose, understand this
English feeling." [Endnote: 2.]

"Pardon me," said Redclyffe, "I can perfectly understand it. An
American, in his feelings towards England, has all the jealousy and
exclusiveness of Englishmen themselves,--perhaps, indeed, a little
exaggerated."

"I beg your pardon," said the Englishman, incredulously, "I think you
cannot possibly understand it!" [Endnote: 3.]

The guests were by this time all assembled, and at the Warden's bidding
they moved from the reception-room to the dining-hall, in some order and
precedence, of which Redclyffe could not exactly discover the principle,
though he found that to himself--in his quality, doubtless, of
Ambassador--there was assigned a pretty high place. A venerable
dignitary of the Church--a dean, he seemed to be--having asked a
blessing, the fair scene of the banquet now lay before the guests,
presenting a splendid spectacle, in the high-walled, antique, tapestried
hall, overhung with the dark, intricate oaken beams, with the high
Gothic windows, through one of which the setting sunbeams streamed, and
showed the figures of kings and warriors, and the old Braithwaites among
them. Beneath and adown the hall extended the long line of the tables,
covered with the snow of the damask tablecloth, on which glittered,
gleamed, and shone a good quality of ancient ancestral plate, and an
_épergne_ of silver, extending down the middle; also the gleam of golden
wine in the decanters; and truly Redclyffe thought that it was a noble
spectacle, made so by old and stately associations, which made a noble
banquet of what otherwise would be only a vulgar dinner. The English
have this advantage and know how to make use of it. They bring--in these
old, time-honored feasts--all the past to sit down and take the stately
refreshment along with them, and they pledge the historic characters in
their wine.

A printed bill of fare, in gold letters, lay by each plate, on which
Redclyffe saw the company glancing with great interest. The first dish,
of course, was turtle soup, of which--as the gentleman next him, the
Mayor of a neighboring town, told Redclyffe--it was allowable to take
twice. This was accompanied, according to one of those rules which one
knows not whether they are arbitrary or founded on some deep reason, by
a glass of punch. Then came the noble turbot, the salmon, the sole, and
divers of fishes, and the dinner fairly set in. The genial Warden seemed
to have given liberal orders to the attendants, for they spared not
to offer hock, champagne, sherry, to the guests, and good bitter ale,
foaming in the goblet; and so the stately banquet went on, with somewhat
tedious magnificence; and yet with a fulness of effect and thoroughness
of sombre life that made Redclyffe feel that, so much importance being
assigned to it,--it being so much believed in,--it was indeed a feast.
The cumbrous courses swept by, one after another; and Redclyffe, finding
it heavy work, sat idle most of the time, regarding the hall, the old
decaying beams, the armor hanging beneath the galleries, and these
Englishmen feasting where their fathers had feasted for so many ages,
the same occasion, the same men, probably, in appearance, though
the black coat and the white neckcloth had taken the place of ruff,
embroidered doublet, and the magnificence of other ages. After all, the
English have not such good things to eat as we in America, and certainly
do not know better how to make them palatable. [Endnote: 4.]

Well; but by and by the dinner came to a conclusion, as regarded the
eating part; the cloth was withdrawn; a dessert of fruits, fresh and
dried, pines, hothouse grapes, and all candied conserves of the Indies,
was put on the long extent of polished mahogany. There was a tuning up
of musicians, an interrogative drawing of fiddle-bows, and other
musical twangs and puffs; the decanters opposite the Warden and his
vice-president,--sherry, port, Redclyffe's Madeira, and claret, were put
in motion along the table, and the guests filled their glasses for the
toast which, at English dinner-tables, is of course the first to be
honored,--the Queen. Then the band struck up the good old anthem, "God
save the Queen," which the whole company rose to their feet to sing.
It was a spectacle both interesting and a little ludicrous to
Redclyffe,--being so apart from an American's sympathies, so unlike
anything that he has in his life or possibilities,--this active and warm
sentiment of loyalty, in which love of country centres, and assimilates,
and transforms itself into a passionate affection for a person, in whom
they love all their institutions. To say the truth, it seemed a happy
notion; nor could the American--while he comforted himself in the pride
of his democracy, and that he himself was a sovereign--could he help
envying it a little, this childlike love and reverence for a person
embodying all their country, their past, their earthly future. He felt
that it might be delightful to have a sovereign, provided that sovereign
were always a woman,--and perhaps a young and fine one. But, indeed,
this is not the difficulty, methinks, in English institutions which
the American finds it hardest to deal with. We could endure a born
sovereign, especially if made such a mere pageant as the English make of
theirs. What we find it hardest to conceive of is, the satisfaction with
which Englishmen think of a race above them, with privileges that they
cannot share, entitled to condescend to them, and to have gracious and
beautiful manners at their expense; to be kind, simple, unpretending,
because these qualities are more available than haughtiness; to be
specimens of perfect manhood;--all these advantages in consequence of
their position. If the peerage were a mere name, it would be nothing to
envy; but it is so much more than a name; it enables men to be really so
superior. The poor, the lower classes, might bear this well enough;
but the classes that come next to the nobility,--the upper middle
classes,--how they bear it so lovingly is what must puzzle the American.
But probably the advantage of the peerage is the less perceptible the
nearer it is looked at.

It must be confessed that Redclyffe, as he looked at this assembly
of peers and gentlemen, thought with some self-gratulation of the
probability that he had within his power as old a rank, as desirable a
station, as the best of them; and that if he were restrained from taking
it, it would probably only be by the democratic pride that made him
feel that he could not, retaining all his manly sensibility, accept
this gewgaw on which the ages--his own country especially--had passed
judgment, while it had been suspended over his head. He felt himself, at
any rate, in a higher position, having the option of taking this rank,
and forbearing to do so, than if he took it. [Endnote: 5.]

After this ensued a ceremony which is of antique date in old English
corporations and institutions, at their high festivals. It is called the
Loving Cup. A sort of herald or toast-master behind the Warden's chair
made proclamation, reciting the names of the principal guests, and
announcing to them, "The Warden of the Braithwaite Hospital drinks to
you in a Loving Cup"; of which cup, having sipped, or seemed to sip (for
Redclyffe observed that the old drinkers were rather shy of it) a small
quantity, he sent it down the table. Its progress was accompanied with
a peculiar entanglement of ceremony, one guest standing up while another
drinks, being pretty much as follows. First, each guest receiving it
covered from the next above him, the same took from the silver cup its
silver cover; the guest drank with a bow to the Warden and company, took
the cover from the preceding guest, covered the cup, handed it to the
next below him, then again removed the cover, replaced it after the
guest had drunk, who, on his part, went through the same ceremony.
And thus the cup went slowly on its way down the stately hall; these
ceremonies being, it is said, originally precautions against the risk,
in wild times, of being stabbed by the man who was drinking with you, or
poisoned by one who should fail to be your taster. The cup was a fine,
ancient piece of plate, massive, heavy, curiously wrought with armorial
bearings, in which the leopard's head appeared. Its contents, so far as
Redclyffe could analyze them by a moderate sip, appeared to be claret,
sweetened, with spices, and, however suited to the peculiarity of
antique palates, was not greatly to Redclyffe's taste. [Endnote: 6.]

Redclyffe's companion just below him, while the Loving Cup was beginning
its march, had been explaining the origin of the custom as a defence
of the drinker in times of deadly feud; when it had reached Lord
Braithwaite, who drank and passed it to Redclyffe covered, and with the
usual bow, Redclyffe looked into his Lordship's Italian eyes and dark
face as he did so, and the thought struck him, that, if there could
possibly be any use in keeping up this old custom, it might be so now;
for, how intimated he could hardly tell, he was sensible in his deepest
self of a deadly hostility in this dark, courteous, handsome face. He
kept his eyes fixed on his Lordship as he received the cup, and felt
that in his own glance there was an acknowledgment of the enmity that he
perceived, and a defiance, expressed without visible sign, and felt in
the bow with which they greeted one another. When they had both resumed
their seats, Redclyffe chose to make this ceremonial intercourse the
occasion of again addressing him.

"I know not whether your Lordship is more accustomed than myself to
these stately ceremonials," said he.

"No," said Lord Braithwaite, whose English was very good. "But this is
a good old ceremony, and an ingenious one; for does it not twine us into
knotted links of love--this Loving Cup--like a wreath of Bacchanals whom
I have seen surrounding an antique vase. Doubtless it has great
efficacy in entwining a company of friendly guests into one affectionate
society."

"Yes; it should seem so," replied Redclyffe, with a smile, and again
meeting those black eyes, which smiled back on him. "It should seem so,
but it appears that the origin of the custom was quite different, and
that it was as a safeguard to a man when he drank with his enemy. What
a peculiar flavor it must have given to the liquor, when the eyes of two
deadly foes met over the brim of the Loving Cup, and the drinker knew
that, if he withdrew it, a dagger would be in his heart, and the other
watched him drink, to see if it was poison!"

"Ah!" responded his Lordship, "they had strange fashions in those rough
old times. Nowadays, we neither stab, shoot, nor poison. I scarcely
think we hate except as interest guides us, without malevolence."

This singular conversation was interrupted by a toast, and the rising
of one of the guests to answer it. Several other toasts of routine
succeeded; one of which, being to the honor of the old founder of the
Hospital, Lord Braithwaite, as his representative, rose to reply,--which
he did in good phrases, in a sort of eloquence unlike that of the
Englishmen around him, and, sooth to say, comparatively unaccustomed as
he must have been to the use of the language, much more handsomely than
they. In truth, Redclyffe was struck and amused with the rudeness, the
slovenliness, the inartistic quality of the English speakers, who rather
seemed to avoid grace and neatness of set purpose, as if they would be
ashamed of it. Nothing could be more ragged than these utterances
which they called speeches; so patched, and darned; and yet, somehow or
other--though dull and heavy as all which seemed to inspire them--they
had a kind of force. Each man seemed to have the faculty of getting,
after some rude fashion, at the sense and feeling that was in him; and
without glibness, without smoothness, without form or comeliness, still
the object with which each one rose to speak was accomplished,--and what
was more remarkable, it seemed to be accomplished without the speaker's
having any particular plan for doing it. He was surprised, too, to
observe how loyally every man seemed to think himself bound to speak,
and rose to do his best, however unfit his usual habits made him for the
task. Observing this, and thinking how many an American would be taken
aback and dumbfounded by being called on for a dinner speech, he could
not but doubt the correctness of the general opinion, that Englishmen
are naturally less facile of public speech than our countrymen.

"You surpass your countrymen," said Redclyffe, when his Lordship resumed
his seat, amid rapping and loud applause.

"My countrymen? I scarcely know whether you mean the English or
Italians," said Lord Braithwaite. "Like yourself, I am a hybrid, with
really no country, and ready to take up with any."

"I have a country,--one which I am little inclined to deny," replied
Redclyffe, gravely, while a flush (perhaps of conscientious shame) rose
to his brow.

His Lordship bowed, with a dark Italian smile, but Redclyffe's attention
was drawn away from the conversation by a toast which the Warden now
rose to give, and in which he found himself mainly concerned. With a
little preface of kind words (not particularly aptly applied) to
the great and kindred country beyond the Atlantic, the worthy Warden
proceeded to remark that his board was honored, on this high festival,
with a guest from that new world; a gentleman yet young, but already
distinguished in the councils of his country; the bearer, he remarked,
of an honored English name, which might well claim to be remembered
here, and on this occasion, although he had understood from his friend
that the American bearers of this name did not count kindred with the
English ones. This gentleman, he further observed, with considerable
flourish and emphasis, had recently been called from his retirement and
wanderings into the diplomatic service of his country, which he would
say, from his knowledge, the gentleman was well calculated to honor. He
drank the health of the Honorable Edward Redclyffe, Ambassador of the
United States to the Court of Hohen-Linden.

Our English cousins received this toast with the kindest enthusiasm,
as they always do any such allusion to our country; it being a festal
feeling, not to be used except on holidays. They rose, with glass in
hand, in honor of the Ambassador; the band struck up "Hail, Columbia";
and our hero marshalled his thoughts as well as he might for the
necessary response; and when the tumult subsided he arose.

His quick apprehending had taught him something of the difference of
taste between an English and an American audience at a dinner-table;
he felt that there must be a certain looseness, and carelessness, and
roughness, and yet a certain restraint; that he must not seem to aim
at speaking well, although, for his own ambition, he was not content
to speak ill; that, somehow or other, he must get a heartiness into his
speech; that he must not polish, nor be too neat, and must come with
a certain rudeness to his good points, as if he blundered on them,
and were surprised into them. Above all, he must let the good wine and
cheer, and all that he knew and really felt of English hospitality, as
represented by the kind Warden, do its work upon his heart, and speak
up to the extent of what he felt--and if a little more, then no great
harm--about his own love for the father-land, and the broader grounds of
the relations between the two countries. On this system, Redclyffe began
to speak; and being naturally and habitually eloquent, and of mobile and
ready sensibilities, he succeeded, between art and nature, in making
a speech that absolutely delighted the company, who made the old hall
echo, and the banners wave and tremble, and the board shake, and the
glasses jingle, with their rapturous applause. What he said--or some
shadow of it, and more than he quite liked to own--was reported in the
county paper that gave a report of the dinner; but on glancing over it,
it seems not worth while to produce this eloquent effort in our pages,
the occasion and topics being of merely temporary interest.

Redclyffe sat down, and sipped his claret, feeling a little ashamed of
himself, as people are apt to do after a display of this kind.

"You know the way to the English heart better than I do," remarked his
Lordship, after a polite compliment to the speech. "Methinks these dull
English are being improved in your atmosphere. The English need a
change every few centuries,--either by immigration of new stock, or
transportation of the old,--or else they grow too gross and earthly,
with their beef, mutton, and ale. I think, now, it might benefit both
countries, if your New England population were to be reciprocally
exchanged with an equal number of Englishmen. Indeed, Italians might do
as well."

"I should regret," said Redclyffe, "to change the English, heavy as they
are."

"You are an admirable Englishman," said his Lordship. "For my part,
I cannot say that the people are very much to my taste, any more than
their skies and climate, in which I have shivered during the two years
that I have spent here."

Here their conversation ceased; and Redclyffe listened to a long train
of speechifying, in the course of which everybody, almost, was toasted;
everybody present, at all events, and many absent. The Warden's old
wine was not spared; the music rang and resounded from the gallery; and
everybody seemed to consider it a model feast, although there were no
very vivid signs of satisfaction, but a decorous, heavy enjoyment, a