"They will, indeed," said Sir Sidney Delaware, "as long as there is taste in man. Nevertheless, the poet--who is perhaps as great a philosopher, too, as ever lived--has sacrificed, like many philosophers, an immense gift of genius to a false hypothesis in regard to his art; and has consequently systematically poured forth more trash than perhaps any man living. His poems, collected, always put me in mind of an account I have somewhere read of the diamond mines of Golconda, where inestimable jewels were found mingled with masses of soft mud. But you have long done breakfast, Mr. Burrel. Come, Blanche, I am going to take Mr. Burrel to the terrace, and descant most dully on all the antiquities of the house. Let us have your company, my love; for we shall meet with so many old things, it may be as well to have something young to relieve them!" It required but a short space of time to array Blanche Delaware for the walk round the terrace that her father proposed. In less than a minute she came down in the same identical cottage bonnet--the ugliest of all things--in which Burrel had first beheld her with her brother; but, strange to say, although on that occasion he had only thought her a pretty country girl, so changed were now all his feelings--so many beauties had he marked which then lay hid, that, as she descended with a smiling and happy face to join them at the door of the hall, he thought her the loveliest creature that he had ever beheld in any climate, or at any time. The whole party sallied forth; and as people who like each other, and whose ideas are not commonplace, can make an agreeable conversation out of any thing, the walk round the old house, and the investigation of every little turn and corner of the building, passed over most pleasantly to all, although Blanche and her brother knew not only every stone in the edifice, but every word almost that could be said upon them. They were accustomed, however, to look upon their father with so much affection and reverence; and the misfortunes under which he laboured, had mingled so much tenderness with their love, that "an oft told tale" from his lips lost its tediousness, being listened to, by the ears of deep regard. Burrel, too, was all attention; and, while Sir Sidney Delaware descanted learnedly on the buttery, and the wet and dry larder, and the priors parlour, and the scriptorium, and pointed out the obtuse Gothic arches described from four centres, which characterize the architecture of Henry VIII., he filled up all the pauses with some new and original observation on the same theme; and though certainly not so learned on the subject as Sir Sidney himself, yet he showed that, at all events, he possessed sufficient information to feel an interest therein, and to furnish easily the matter for more erudite rejoinder.