ke, methodical neatness which belonged to Roland,--that was
the first thing that struck one; that was the general character of the
whole. Then, in details, there, on stout oak shelves, were the books on
which my father loved to jest his more imaginative brother; there they
were,--Froissart, Barante, Joinville, the Mort d'Arthur, Amadis of
Gaul, Spenser's Faerie Queene, a noble copy of Strutt's Horda, Mallet's
Northern Antiquities, Percy's Reliques, Pope's Homer, books on gunnery,
archery, hawking, fortification; old chivalry and modern war together,
cheek-by-jowl.

Old chivalry and modern war! Look to that tilting helmet with the tall
Caxton crest, and look to that trophy near it,--a French cuirass--and
that old banner (a knight's pennon) surmounting those crossed bayonets.
And over the chimneypiece there--bright, clean, and, I warrant you,
dusted daily--are Roland's own sword, his holsters and pistols, yea, the
saddle, pierced and lacerated, from which he had reeled when that leg--I
gasped, I felt it all at a glance, and I stole softly to the spot, and,
had Roland not been there, I could have kissed that sword as reverently
as if it had been a Bayard's or a Sidney's.

My uncle was too modest to guess my emotion; he rather thought I
had turned my face to conceal a smile at his vanity, and said, in a
deprecating tone of apology: "It was all Bolt's doing, foolish fellow!"

(1) This certainly cannot be said of Cumberland generally, one of the
most beautiful counties in Great Britain. But the immediate district to
which Mr. Caxton's exclamation refers, if not ugly, is at least savage,
bare, and rude.

CHAPTER IV.

Our host regaled us with a hospitality that notably contrasted his
economical thrifty habits in London. To be sure, Bolt had caught the
great pike which headed the feast; and Bolt, no doubt, had helped
to rear those fine chickens ab ovo; Bolt, I have no doubt, made that
excellent Spanish omelette; and, for the rest, the products of the
sheepwalk and the garden came in as volunteer auxiliaries,--very
different from the mercenary recruits by which those metropolitan
Condottieri, the butcher and greengrocer, hasten the ruin of that
melancholy commonwealth called "genteel poverty."

Our evening passed cheerfully; and Roland, contrary to his custom,
was talker in chief. It was eleven o'clock before Bolt appeared with a
lantern to conduct me through the courtyard to my dormitory among the
ruins,--a ceremony