The meal became very cheerful: as it went on, the first strangeness of new arrival wore off with the two guests. Jest and gaiety succeeded to more serious discourse, and topic after topic was brought forward and cast away again with that easy lightness which gives a great charm to conversation. The master of the house was somewhat stiff and stately, it is true; but the three young men did not suffer his dignified air to chill them. The priest was a man of great and very various information, had seen, studied, and penetrated not only all the ordinary aspects of society, but the hearts and spirits of thousands of individuals. There was not a subject that he could not talk upon, whether gay or grave; from the green-room of the theatre or opera-house, to the cabinets of statesmen and the saloons of monarchs. His conversation was graceful, easy, flowing, and becoming; and although there was a point of sarcastic wit in it which gave it, in the opinion of Dudley, almost too great a piquancy, yet when that gentleman recollected what had been said, he could not find one word that was unfitted to the character of a well-bred man and a priest. It was all so quietly done too: the stinging gibe, the light and flashing jest, that the young tutor sometimes thought the whole must have received point and peculiar application from the manner; but yet he could not recollect emphasis laid upon any word; and he carried away from that table, when he retired to rest at night, much matter for thought upon all that he had seen, and many a deep feeling re-awakened in his heart, which he had hoped and trusted had been laid asleep by the power of reason, and the struggle of a strong mind against a warm and enthusiastic heart. CHAPTER IV. The wind had blown away the clouds which lay so heavy on the sky the night before. The morning rose bright and sparkling, with a brisk gale stirring the air, and a clear, fresh, frosty look over the whole earth. At an early hour--for matutinal habits had become inveterate--Mr. Dudley rose, and going to the window, gazed out upon a scene of which he had been able to discover little at the dark hour of his arrival. I will not pause to describe all that he beheld, for the public taste is as capricious in matters of composition as in regard to mere dress; and the detailed description of scenery, the pictures with the pen, which please much at one time, weary at another. It is a railroad age, too: all the world is anxious to get on, and we hurry past remorselessly all the finer traits of mind and character which were objects of thought and study to our ancestors, just as the traveller, in the long screaming, groaning, smoking train, is hurried past those sweet and beautiful spots in which the contemplative man of former days was accustomed to pause and ponder.