[D] The _gai-science_, so early as the commencement of the century of which we write, had its degrees, its colleges, and its professors, who, though itinerants, and dependent for their subsistence on their instrument and voice, considered war no less their trade than song, esteeming themselves, and moreover admitted by others to be, in the fullest sense, gentlemen. The courts and thoroughfares of the old town--for it was old even then--by slow degrees grew silent and deserted; and, ere the sun was well above the wave, the multitudes which thronged them had rolled downward to the port, and stood in dense ranks gazing on its calm and sheltered basin. Glorious indeed and lovely was the sight when the first yellow rays streamed over the still waters: they waked the distant summits of the hills behind the town into a sudden life; they kissed the crest of every curling ripple that dimpled with its “innumerable laughter” the azure face of ocean; but, more than all, they seemed to dwell upon two noble barks, which lay, each riding at a single anchor, at a short arrow-shot from the white sands that girt as with a silver frame the liquid mirror of the harbor. Fashioned by the best skill of that early day, and ornamented with the most lavish splendor, though widely different from the floating castles of modern times, those vessels--the picked cruisers of the British navy--were in their structure no less picturesque than in their decoration royally magnificent. Long, low, and buoyant, they floated lightly as birds upon the surface; their open waists already bristling with the long oars by which, after the fashion of the Roman galley, they were propelled in serene weather; their masts clothed with the wings which seemed in vain to woo the breeze; their elevated sterns and forecastles blazing with tapestries of gold and silver, reflected in long lines of light, scarcely broken by the dancing ripples. The larger of the two bore on her foresail, blazoned in gorgeous heraldry, the arms of England. The second, somewhat smaller, but if anything more elegant in her proportions, and fitted with a nicer taste, although less sumptuous, was painted white from stem to stern; her oars, fifty in number, of the same spotless hue, were barred upon the blades with silver; and on her foresail of white canvass, overlaid with figured damask, were wrought, among a glittering profusion of devices, in characters of silver, the words “La Blanche Navire.” Beyond them, in the outer bay, a dozen ships or more were dimly seen through the mist-wreaths which the wintry sun was gradually scattering--their canvass hanging in festoons from their long yard-arms, and their decks crowded, not with mariners alone, but with the steel-clad forms of men-at-arms and archers, the gallant train of the third Norman who had swayed the destinies of England.