There was a garden-scene, in the foreground of which, where the eyes of the spectators were near enough to discriminate, were rustic baskets with geraniums, fuchsias, and cactuses, to give a southern air. In the middle distance, armfuls of honeysuckle in full bloom were brought in and twined about white pilasters. There was an arbour overhung with heavy masses of the trumpet-creeper. A tall column or two surmounted with graceful garden-vases were covered about with raspberry-vines, the stems of brilliant scarlet showing among the green. A thick clump of dogwood, whose large white blossoms could easily pass for magnolias, gave background. The green was lit with showy colour of every sort,--handfuls of nasturtiums, now and then a peony, larkspurs for blue, patches of poppies, and in the garden-vases high on the pillars (the imposition!) clusters of pink hollyhocks which were meant to pass for oleander-blossoms, and did, still, wet with the drops of the afternoon shower, which had not dried away when all was in place. When it comes to rain and dewdrops, dear Dr. Holmes, a "fresh-water college" has an advantage. First, it was given under gas; then, the hall being darkened, a magnesium-light gave a moon-like radiance, in which the dew on the buds glistened, and the mignonette seemed to exhale a double perfume, and a dreamy melody of Mendelssohn sung by two sweet girl-voices floated out about the "pleached bower," like a song of nightingales. Then toward the end came the scene of the chapel and Hero's tomb. No lovelier form was ever sculptured than that of the beautiful Queen Louisa of Prussia, as she lies in the mausoleum at Charlottenburg, carved by Rauch, asleep on the tomb in white purity. To the eye, our Hero's tomb was just such a block of spotless marble seen against a background of black, with just such a fair figure recumbent upon it, whose palms and lids and draping the chisel of an artist seemed to have folded and closed and hung,--all idealised again by the magic of the magnesium-light. As the crimson curtain was drawn apart, an organ sounded, and a far-away choir sent into the hush the _Ave Verum_ of Mozart, low-breathed and solemn. It was not Munich, Fastidiosus. They were American young men and young women, with no resources but those of a rural college, and such as their own taste and the woods and gardens could furnish; but the young men were shapely and intelligent, and the young women had grace and brightness; their hearts were in it, and in the result surely there was a measure of "sweetness and light" for them and those who beheld.