You pride yourself on your recitation of poetry, Talboys. Charm us with the finest descriptive passage you can remember from the British Poets. Not too loud--not too loud--this is not Exeter Hall--nor are you about to address the Water-witch from the top of Ben-Lomond. TALBOYS. "But thou, Clitumnus! in thy sweetest wave Of the most living crystal that was e'er The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear Thy grassy banks, whereon the milk-white steer Grazes; the purest god of gentle waters! And most serene of aspect, and most clear; Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters-- A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters! "And on thy happy shore a Temple still, Of small and delicate proportion, keeps, Upon a mild declivity of hill, Its memory of thee; beneath it sweeps Thy current's calmness; oft from out it leaps The finny darter with the glittering scales, Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps; While, chance, some scatter'd water-lily sails Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubblin-tales. "Pass not unblest the Genius of the place! If through the air a zephyr more serene Win to the brow, 'tis his; and if ye trace Along his margin a more eloquent green, If on the heart the freshness of the scene Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust Of weary life a moment lave it clean With Nature's baptism,--'tis to him ye must Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust." NORTH. Admirably said and sung. Your low tones, Talboys, are earnest and impressive; and you recite, like all true lovers of song, in the spirit of soliloquy, as if you were yourself the sole listener. How I hate Spouting. Your elocutionist makes his mouth a _jet d'eau_--and by his gestures calls on all the auditors to behold the performance. From the lips of the man who has music in his soul, the words of inspiration flow as from a natural fountain, for his soul has made them its own--and delights to feel in their beauty an adequate expression of its own emotions. TALBOYS. I spoke them, to myself--but I was still aware of _your_ presence, my dear sir. NORTH. The Stanzas are fine--but are they the finest in Descriptive Poetry? TALBOYS. I do not say so, sir. Any request of yours I interpret liberally, and accede to at once. Finer stanzas there may be--many; but I took them because they first came to heart. "Beautiful exceedingly" they are--they may not be faultless. NORTH. Sir Walter has said--"Perhaps there are no verses in our language of happier descriptive power than the two stanzas which characterise the Clitumnus." TALBOYS. Then I am right. NORTH.