Yet,--is this sharp, irreverent mention, wholly fair to the old gentleman, upon whose confections, and pastries, so many of us have feasted in times past? What a delight it was--not only for youngsters, but for white-haired judges, and country lawyers--to listen for the jingle of the spurs, when one of Mr. James’s swarthy knights--“with a grace induced by habits of martial exercise”--came dashing into old country quietudes, with his visor up; or, perhaps in “a Genoa bonnet of black velvet, round which his rich chestnut hair coiled in profusion”--making the welkin ring with his--“How now, Sir Villain!” I caught sight of this great necromancer of “miniver furs,” and mantua-making chivalry--in youngish days, in the city of New York--where he was making a little over-ocean escape from the multitudinous work that flowed from him at home; a well-preserved man, of scarce fifty years, stout, erect, gray-haired, and with countenance blooming with mild uses of mild English ale--kindly, unctuous--showing no signs of deep thoughtfulness or of harassing toil. I looked him over, in boyish way, for traces of the court splendors I had gazed upon, under his ministrations, but saw none; nor anything of the “manly beauty of features, rendered scarcely less by a deep scar upon the forehead,”--nor “of the gray cloth doublets slashed with purple;” a stanch, honest, amiable, well-dressed Englishman--that was all. And yet, what delights he had conjured for us! Shall we be ashamed to name them, or to confess it all? Shall the modern show of new flowerets of fiction, and of lilies--forced to the front in January--make us forget utterly the old cinnamon roses, and the homely but fragrant pinks, which once regaled and delighted us, in the April and May of our age?