In pursuance of the promise made by old Mr. Martindale, Miss Isabella Featherstone, and others of the party who had no other amusement in view, went the following morning to the cottage to look over the prints and drawings. The old gentleman had no light task to find and set in order his dispersed treasures: for his pictures were, as his books, in every part of the house, not even excepting the kitchen. He had risen early in order to find them; and it had been to him a task not without labour, though accompanied also with some powerful and interesting feelings. He had been looking back to past times and to years long gone by. He had been conversing with his former self, and had revived the forms of old acquaintances long since dead. He saw them again, and heard them again: their faces gleamed upon him through the lines of many an old engraving. He saw again, after dust had long covered, and darkness had long concealed them, drawings of many a palace in Rome, in Naples, in Venice, from the contemplation of which he had imbibed his love of architecture; and he began, as he looked back into the past, to entertain some feelings of regret. Almost every body looks back to the past with regret, especially old bachelors. By this employment the feelings of the old gentleman were greatly excited, and he began to be almost sentimental; so that when his visitors arrived at his cottage, he received them, not as usual with the odd manners of a humorist, but with a most courteous and old-fashioned politeness.