he had been introduced. She was a quiet, shy, undemonstrative young
woman, with a fine bloom and other charms which she kept as much in the
background as possible, with maiden reserve. (There is a Catholic priest
at table.)

Mr. Eldredge talked chiefly, during dinner, of art, with which his long
residence in Italy had made him thoroughly acquainted, and for which he
seemed to have a genuine taste and enjoyment. It was a subject on which
Middleton knew little; but he felt the interest in it which appears to be
not uncharacteristic of Americans, among the earliest of their
developments of cultivation; nor had he failed to use such few
opportunities as the English public or private galleries offered him to
acquire the rudiments of a taste. He was surprised at the depth of some
of Mr. Eldredge's remarks on the topics thus brought up, and at the
sensibility which appeared to be disclosed by his delicate appreciation
of some of the excellences of those great masters who wrote their epics,
their tender sonnets, or their simple ballads, upon canvas; and Middleton
conceived a respect for him which he had not hitherto felt, and which
possibly Mr. Eldredge did not quite deserve. Taste seems to be a
department of moral sense; and yet it is so little identical with it, and
so little implies conscience, that some of the worst men in the world
have been the most refined.

After Miss Eldredge had retired, the host appeared to desire to make the
dinner a little more social than it had hitherto been; he called for a
peculiar species of wine from Southern Italy, which he said was the most
delicious production of the grape, and had very seldom, if ever before
been imported pure into England. A delicious perfume came from the
cradled bottle, and bore an ethereal, evanescent testimony to the truth
of what he said: and the taste, though too delicate for wine quaffed in