(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 which, every night, shine or dark, he insisted upon
punctiliously performing.

It was long before I could sleep; before I could believe that but so few
days had elapsed since Roland heard of his son's death,--that son whose