ever upon the rosy mouth, like Joy watching Love, was kept in its
fullest extent by the mind, from which all thoughts, pure, kind, and
guileless, flowed like waters from a well which a spirit has made holy
for its own dwelling.

On this evening we have said that she sat by her father's side
and listened, though she only in part drank in its sense, to his
conversation with his guest.

The room was of great extent and surrounded with books, over which at
close intervals the busts of the departed Great and the immortal Wise
looked down. There was the sublime beauty of Plato, the harsher and
more earthly countenance of Tully, the only Roman (except Lucretius) who
might have been a Greek. There the mute marble gave the broad front of
Bacon (itself a world), and there the features of Locke showed how the
mind wears away the links of flesh with the file of thought. And over
other departments of those works which remind us that man is made little
lower than the angels, the stern face of the Florentine who sung of hell
contrasted with the quiet grandeur enthroned on the fair brow of the
English poet,--"blind but bold,"--and there the glorious but genial
countenance of him who has found in all humanity a friend, conspicuous
among sages and minstrels, claimed brotherhood with all.

The fire burned clear and high, casting a rich twilight (for there
was no other light in the room) over that Gothic chamber, and shining
cheerily upon the varying countenance of Clarence and the more
contemplative features of his host. In the latter you might see that
care and thought had been harsh but not unhallowed companions. In the
lines which crossed his expanse of brow, time seemed to have buried many
hopes; but his mien and air, if loftier, were gentler than in younger
days; and though they had gained somewhat in dignity, had lost greatly
in reserve.

There was in the old chamber, with its fretted roof and ancient
"garniture," the various books which surrounded it, walls that the
learned built to survive themselves, and in the marble likenesses
of those for whom thought had won eternity, joined to the hour, the
breathing quiet, and the hearth-light, by whose solitary rays we
love best in the eves of autumn to discourse on graver or subtler
themes,--there was in all this a spell which seemed particularly to
invite and to harmonize with that tone of conversation, some portions of
which we are now about to relate.

"How loudly," said Clarence