id so all
dimness vanished and he saw the chair perfectly empty. The pianist
stopped also at the cessation of the violin, and asked what ailed him.

"It is only that my eyes were dim," he answered.

"We have had enough for to-night," said Mr. Gaskell; "let us stop.
I shall be locked out." He shut the piano, and as he did so the clock
in New College tower struck twelve. He left the room running, but was
late enough at his college door to be reported, admonished with a fine
against such late hours, and confined for a week to college; for being
out after midnight was considered, at that time at least, a somewhat
serious offence.

Thus for some days the musical practice was compulsorily intermitted,
but resumed on the first evening after Mr. Gaskell's term of confinement
was expired. After they had performed several suites of Graziani, and
finished as usual with the "Areopagita," Mr. Gaskell sat for a time
silent at the instrument, as though thinking with himself, and then
said--

"I cannot say how deeply this old-fashioned music affects me. Some would
try to persuade us that these suites, of which the airs bear the names
of different dances, were always written rather as a musical essay and
for purposes of performance than for persons to dance to, as their names
would more naturally imply. But I think these critics are wrong at least
in some instances. It is to me impossible to believe that such a melody,
for instance, as the _Giga_ of Corelli which we have played, was not
written for actual purposes of dancing. One can almost hear the beat
of feet upon the floor, and I imagine that in the time of Corelli the
practice of dancing, while not a whit inferior in grace, had more of the
tripudistic or beating character than is now esteemed consistent with a
correct ball-room performance. The _Gagliarda_ too, which we play now so
constantly, possesses a singular power of assisting the imagination to
picture or reproduce such scenes as those which it no doubt formerly
enlivened. I know not why, but it is constantly identified in my mind
with some revel which I have perhaps seen in a picture, where several
couples are dancing a licentious measure in a long room lit by a number
of silver sconces of the debased model common at the end of the
seventeenth century. It is probably a reminiscence of my late excursion
that gives to these dancers in my fancy the olive skin, dark hair, and
bright eyes of the Italian type; and they wear d