“Why, ay, sir, if you bees curous about _that_ there gentleman, I can tell you a deal about him. But them as comes to see the new man does not covet to hear talk of the old master; but, nevertheless, there’s none like him--he gave me and wife that there white cottage yonder, half ways up the bank, where you see the smoke rising between the trees--as snug a cottage it is!--But that is no matter to you, sir. But I wish you had but _seed_ him the night of the shipwreck, he and his son, God above bless him, and them--wherever they are, if they’re above ground. I’d row out the worse night ever we had, to set my eyes on them again before I die, but for a minute. Ay, that night of the shipwreck, not a man was willing to go out with them, or could be got out the first turn, but myself.” Upon this text he spoke at large, entering into a most circumstantial and diffuse history of the shipwreck, mingling his own praises with those which he heartily bestowed upon the Percys of the right good old branch. Commissioner Falconer meantime was not in a condition to throw in any thing in favour of his new friend Sir Robert Percy; he was taking pinch after pinch of snuff, looking alternately at the water and the boat, sitting stiffly upright in anxious silence. Although in the incessant practice of suppressing his own feelings, corporeal and mental, from respect or complaisance to his superiors in rank and station, yet he presently found it beyond the utmost efforts of his courtly philosophy to endure his qualms of mind and body. Interrupting the talkative boatman, he first conjured the orator to mind what he was about; at last, Mr. Falconer complaining of growing very sick, the count gave up all thoughts of proceeding farther, and begged the boatman to put them ashore as soon as he could. They landed near the village, which it was necessary that they should pass through, before they could reach the appointed place of meeting. The poor commissioner, whose stomach was still disordered, and whose head was giddy, observed that they had yet a long walk to take, and proposed sending for one of the carriages--accordingly they waited for it at the village inn. The commissioner, after having made a multitude of apologies to the count, retired to rest himself--during his absence, the count, who, wherever he was, endeavoured to see as much as possible of the manners of the people, began talking to the landlord and landlady. Again the conversation turned upon the characters of the late and the present possessors of Percy-hall; and the good people, by all the anecdotes they told, and still more by the warm attachment they expressed for the old banished family, increased every moment his desire to be personally acquainted with those who in adversity were preferred to persons in present power and prosperity. Count Altenberg, young as he was, had seen enough of the world to feel the full value of eulogiums bestowed