In addition to Sir Telegraph’s travelling library—(which consisted of a single quarto volume, magnificently bound: videlicet, a Greek Pindar, which Sir Telegraph always carried with him; not that he ever read a page of it, but that he thought such a classical inside passenger would be a perpetual vindication of his tethrippharmatelasipedioploctypophilous pursuits), Anthelia and Mr. Forester had taken with them a few of their favourite authors; for, as the ancient and honourable borough of Onevote was situated almost at the extremity of the kingdom, and as Sir Telegraph’s diurnal stages were necessarily limited, they had both conjectured that the poet’s page, by one Made vocal for the amusement of the rest, might furnish an agreeable evening employment in the dearth of conversation. Anthelia also, in compliance with the general desire, had taken her lyre, by which the reader may understand, if he pleases, the _harp-lute-guitar_; which, whatever be its merit as an instrument, has so unfortunate an appellation, that we cannot think of dislocating our pages with such a cacophonous compound. They made but a short stage from Redrose Abbey, and stopped for the first evening at Low-wood Inn, to the great joy of Mr. O’Scarum and Major O’Dogskin. Mr. O’Scarum introduced the Major; and both offered their services to assist Mr. Hippy and Sir Telegraph Paxarett in the council they were holding with the landlady on the eventful subject of dinner. This being arranged, and the hour and minute punctually specified, it was proposed to employ the interval in a little excursion on the lake. The party was distributed in two boats: Sir Telegraph’s grooms rowing the one, and Peter Gray and Harry Fell the other. They rowed to the middle of the lake, and rested on their oars. The sun sank behind the summits of the western mountains: the clouds that, like other mountains, rested motionless above them, crested with the towers and battlements of aerial castles, changed by degrees from fleecy whiteness to the deepest hues of crimson. A solitary cloud, resting on an eastern pinnacle, became tinged with the reflected splendour of the west: the clouds overhead spreading, like a uniform veil of network, through the interstices of which the sky was visible, caught in their turn the radiance, and reflected it on the lake, that lay in its calm expanse like a mirror, imaging with such stillness and accuracy the forms and colours of all around and above it, that it seemed as if the waters were withdrawn by magic, and the boats floated in crimson light between the mountains and the sky.