losed the
great career which it was once supposed awaited him. The accustomed
walk on the terrace was completed, and dinner was announced. This meal
was always celebrated at Cherbury, where new fashions stole down with
a lingering pace, in the great hall itself. An ample table was placed
in the centre on a mat of rushes, sheltered by a large screen covered
with huge maps of the shire and the neighbouring counties. The Lady
Annabel and her good pastor seated themselves at each end of the
table, while Venetia, mounted on a high chair, was waited on by
Mistress Pauncefort, who never condescended by any chance attention to
notice the presence of any other individual but her little charge, on
whose chair she just leaned with an air of condescending devotion.
The butler stood behind his lady, and two other servants watched the
Doctor; rural bodies all, but decked on this day in gorgeous livery
coats of blue and silver, which had been made originally for men of
very different size and bearing. Simple as was the usual diet at
Cherbury the cook was permitted on Sunday full play to her art, which,
in the eighteenth century, indulged in the production of dishes more
numerous and substantial than our refined tastes could at present
tolerate. The Doctor appreciated a good dinner, and his countenance
glistened with approbation as he surveyed the ample tureen of potage
royal, with a boned duck swimming in its centre. Before him still
scowled in death the grim countenance of a huge roast pike, flanked
on one side by a leg of mutton _a-la-daube_, and on the other by
the tempting delicacies of bombarded veal. To these succeeded that
masterpiece of the culinary art, a grand battalia pie, in which the
bodies of chickens, pigeons, and rabbits were embalmed in spices,
cocks' combs, and savoury balls, and well bedewed with one of those
rich sauces of claret, anchovy, and sweet herbs, in which our
great-grandfathers delighted, and which was technically termed a Lear.
But the grand essay of skill was the cover of this pasty, whereon the
curious cook had contrived to represent all the once-living forms that
were now entombed in that gorgeous sepulchre. A Florentine tourte, or
tansy, an old English custard, a more refined blamango, and a riband
jelly of many colours, offered a pleasant relief after these vaster
inventions, and the repast closed with a dish of oyster loaves and a
pompetone of larks.

Notwithstanding the abstemiousness of his host