It was mid-February. Wherever I looked, I saw first the cold white sky above and the snow beneath, and secondly the red faces of skaters out of doors, and indoors the blaze of great fires and the purple and gold of wine. Winter was to be met in every street--white-haired, it is true, but nevertheless a lusty, red-faced fellow, redder than autumn, with a grip of the hands and a roaring voice. As I passed the kitchen, the cook was silently at work. His hair was like the snow, his face like the fire. The brass, steel, pewter, and silver shone. The kitchen, with its fragrance, lustre, and quietness, was like an altar. There, too, was the priest, with stainless vestment and sacerdotal bearing. And as I left him and mounted the stairs, I seemed unblest. I found Scott tedious, Pater excessive, and Sir Thomas Browne a trifler, and threw them aside. Soon there was a knock at the door, and a man--a throne, domination, princedom, virtue, power--swept magnificently in. A light and a warmth, beyond the power of fire to bestow, accompanied him. He bent down solemnly and laid a little white covered plate upon the hearth. Before I could speak--“the gods themselves are hard to recognise”--he was gone. I uncovered the plate with something of my visitant’s solemnity-- Fair spirit of ethereal birth, In whom such mysteries and beauties blend! Still from thine ancient dwelling-place descend, And idealise our too material earth; Still to the Bard thy chaste conceptions lend, To him thine early purity renew; Round every image, grace majestic throw; Till rapturously the living song shall glow With inspiration as thy being true, And Poesy’s creations, decked by thee, Shall wake the tuneful thrill of sensuous ecstasy. It was the climacteric of his career, and he shall go down to posterity upon the palates of men, not as one who worked out his recipes to three places of decimals, or as a distinguished maker of “bishop” or “posset,” or as one worth his weight in oysters, but as the creator of that necessary which is in fact brown bread, toasted and buttered. III Most pontifical of all college servants was old Acamas, who was not long ago to be seen, in his retirement, apparently beating the city bounds, and now and then standing sentry and defender of some old gate or archway. I first noticed him in the chapel quadrangle of----, and could almost have mistaken him for a fellow of the old school, such was his aspect, and the reverent, half-wondering air with which he surveyed the buildings. But he took off his hat to the junior fellow, and I was undeceived. There was something pathetic in that salute. He was himself apparently far worthier than the young man in flannels of the chapel and the ancient arms; and he seemed to know it, as he bent and trembled over his stick to declaim:--