Old chivalry and modern war! Look to that tilting helmet with the tall Caxton crest, and look to that trophy near it,--a French cuirass--and that old banner (a knight's pennon) surmounting those crossed bayonets. And over the chimneypiece there--bright, clean, and, I warrant you, dusted daily--are Roland's own sword, his holsters and pistols, yea, the saddle, pierced and lacerated, from which he had reeled when that leg-- I gasped, I felt it all at a glance, and I stole softly to the spot, and, had Roland not been there, I could have kissed that sword as reverently as if it had been a Bayard's or a Sidney's. My uncle was too modest to guess my emotion; he rather thought I had turned my face to conceal a smile at his vanity, and said, in a deprecating tone of apology: "It was all Bolt's doing, foolish fellow!" (1) This certainly cannot be said of Cumberland generally, one of the most beautiful counties in Great Britain. But the immediate district to which Mr. Caxton's exclamation refers, if not ugly, is at least savage, bare, and rude. CHAPTER IV. Our host regaled us with a hospitality that notably contrasted his economical thrifty habits in London. To be sure, Bolt had caught the great pike which headed the feast; and Bolt, no doubt, had helped to rear those fine chickens ab ovo; Bolt, I have no doubt, made that excellent Spanish omelette; and, for the rest, the products of the sheepwalk and the garden came in as volunteer auxiliaries,--very different from the mercenary recruits by which those metropolitan Condottieri, the butcher and greengrocer, hasten the ruin of that melancholy commonwealth called "genteel poverty." Our evening passed cheerfully; and Roland, contrary to his custom, was talker in chief. It was eleven o'clock before Bolt appeared with a lantern to conduct me through the courtyard to my dormitory among the ruins,--a ceremony which, every night, shine or dark, he insisted upon punctiliously performing.