which my poor father thought he had so carefully cottoned up his Cardan.

Leaving these parties to adjust matters between them, we stepped under
the low doorway and entered Roland's room. Oh! certainly Bolt had
caught the spirit of the thing; certainly he had penetrated down to the
pathos that lay within the deeps of Roland's character. Buffon says,
"The style is the man;" there, the room was the man. That nameless,
inexpressible, soldier--like, 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!"