When we returned from our cruise, we found our rural banquet awaiting us. We were served under an awning suspended from the trunks of two mighty elms, whose branches overhung the water. Lady Gertrude had not exaggerated the culinary skill of the _ci-devant_ housekeeper. What with the fish from the lake, various sorts, dressed in different ways, probably from receipts as old as the monastic days in which fresh-water fishes received the honours due to them—what with some excellent poultry, which, kept in that wild place, seemed to have acquired a finer flavour than farmyard coops bestow—and what with fruits, not rendered malefic by walls of pastry—the repast would have satisfied more refined epicures than we were. Cool, light, sparkling wines, innocent as those which Horace promised to Tyndaris, circled freely. All of us became mirthful, even Clara—all of us except Henry, who still looked as if he were wasting time; and the Painter, who became somewhat too seriously obtrusive of his art, and could with difficulty be kept from merging the whole conversation into criticisms on the landscape effects of Gainsborough contrasted with those of Claude. After dinner we quietly settled ourselves to our several amusements—Lady Gertrude to some notable piece of female work. Clara, after playing us a few airs on her lute, possessed herself of Tracey’s volume of Browning, and pretended to read. The Painter flung himself on the grass, and contemplated with an artist’s eye the curves in the bank, and the lengthening shadows that crept over the still waters. Henry, ever restless, wandered away with a rod in his hand towards a distant gravelly creek, in which the old man at the lodge assured us he had seen perch of three pounds weight. The Librarian alone remained seated at the table, finishing very slowly his bottle of claret, and apparently preparing himself for a peaceful slumber. Tracey and I strolled along the margin of the lake, the swans following us as we walked: they were old friends of his. “So,” said Tracey at last, “you think that my course of life has not been a wise one.” “If all men lived like you, it might be very well for a paradise, but very bad for the world we dwell in.” “Possibly; but it would be very bad for the world we dwell in if the restless spirits were not in some degree kept in check by the calm ones. What a miserable, unsafe, revolutionary state of society would be that in which all the members were men of combative ambition and fidgety genius; all haranguing, fighting, scribbling; all striving, each against the other! We sober fellows are the ballast in the state vessel: without us, it would upset in the first squall! We have our uses, my friend, little as you seem disposed to own it.”