, and, despite the charm of the Northern Wizard, his eye
not on the page. On the wall behind him hangs the picture of Sir Herbert
de Caxton, the soldier-comrade of Sidney and Drake, and at the foot
of the picture Roland has slung his son's sword beside the letter that
spoke of his death, which is framed and glazed,--sword and letter had
become as the last, nor least honored, Penates of the hall; the son was
grown an ancestor.

Not far from my uncle sat Mr. Squills, employed in mapping out
phrenological divisions on a cast he had made from the skull of one of
the Australian aborigines,--a ghastly present, which (in compliance with
a yearly letter to that effect) I had brought him over, together with
a stuffed "wombat" and a large bundle of sarsaparilla. (For the
satisfaction of his patients, I may observe, parenthetically, that the
skull and the "wombat"--that last is a creature between a miniature
pig and a very small badger--were not precisely packed up with the
sarsaparilla!) Farther on stood open, but idle, the new pianoforte, at
which, before my father had given his preparatory hem, and sat down to
the Great Book, Blanche and my mother had been trying hard to teach me
to bear the third in the glee of "The Chough and the Crow to roost have
gone,"--vain task, in spite of all flattering assurances that I have a
very fine "bass" if I could but manage to humor it. Fortunately for the
ears of the audience, that attempt is now abandoned. My mother is
hard at work on her tapestry,--the last pattern in fashion, to wit, a
rosy-cheeked young troubadour playing the lute under a salmon-colored
balcony; the two little girls look gravely on, prematurely in love, I
suspect, with the troubadour; and Blanche and I have stolen away into a
corner, which, by some strange delusion, we consider out of sight, and
in that corner is the cradle of the Neogilos. Indeed, it is not our
fault that it is there,--Roland would have it so; and the baby is so
good, too, he never cries,--at least so say Blanche and my mother;
at all events, he does not cry tonight. And, indeed, that child is a
wonder! He seems to know and respond to what was uppermost at our hearts
when he was born; and yet more when Roland (contrary, I dare say, to all
custom) permitted neither mother nor nurse nor creature of womankind to
hold him at the baptismal font, but bent over the new Christian his own
dark, high-featured face; reminding one of the eagle that hid the infant
in