The autumn wind moans without, and dashes in gusts against the windows; but there is a pleasant murmur from the parlor, with the music of a violin. In this comfortable tavern-parlor, ruddy with the fire-light, a rapt musician stands erect before the chimney and bends his ear to his instrument,-- "And seemed to listen, till he caught Confessions of its secret thought," --a figure and a picture, as he is afterward painted,-- "Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his aspect blithe, His figure tall and straight and lithe,"-- which recall the Norwegian magician, Ole Bull. He plays to the listening group of friends. Of these there is the landlord,--a youth of quiet ways, "a student of old books and days,"--a young Sicilian,--"a Spanish Jew from Alieant,"-- "A theologian, from the school Of Cambridge on the Charles,"-- then a poet, whose portrait, exquisitely sketched and meant for quite another, will yet be prized by the reader, as the spectator prizes, in the Uffizi at Florence, the portraits of the painters by themselves:-- "A poet, too, was there, whose verse Was tender, musical, and terse: The inspiration, the delight, The gleam, the glory, the swift flight Of thoughts so sudden that they seem The revelations of a dream, All these were his: but with them came No envy of another's fame; He did not find his sleep less sweet For music in some neighboring street, Nor rustling hear in every breeze The laurels of Miltiades. Honor and blessings on his head While living, good report when dead, Who, not too eager for renown, Accepts, but does not clutch, the crown." The musician completes the group. When he stops playing, they call upon the landlord for his tale, which he, "although a bashful man," begins. It is "Paul Revere's Ride," already known to many readers as a ballad of the famous incident in the Revolution which has, in American hearts, immortalized a name which this war has but the more closely endeared to them. It is one of the most stirring, ringing, and graphic ballads in the language,--a proper pendant to Browning's "How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix." The poet, listening with eager delight, seizes the sword of the landlord's ancestor which was drawn at Concord fight, and tells him that his grandfather was a grander shape than any old Sir William, "Clinking about in foreign lands, With iron gauntlets on his hands, And on his head an iron pot." All laughed but the landlord,-- "For those who had been longest dead Were always greatest in his eyes."