Mr. Athelstone and his noble guest continued their discourse on the public history of the Baron de Ripperda. Remarking, with some loyal animadversions, on his father Don Juan de Montemar Duke de Ripperda, who, in resentment for some slight from his sovereign, left Spain for the Netherlands; and, joining himself to the United States, exchanged his Spanish rank for that of a northern baron.--While the Marquis regretted that his son, the present illustrious Ripperda, had ever belonged to any other country than that of his ancestors, he expatiated with the pride of a Spaniard on the talents which were now reclaimed by their parent land. Mr. Athelstone, who had all the old-fashioned notions respecting _amor patriæ_, rejoined that the satisfactory accomplishment of Baron de Ripperda's mission as ambassador from the Netherlands to Madrid, had empowered him to resign with honour his bonds to their country; and to resume his hereditary rights in Spain in the manner best calculated to re-establish his house, and to transmit the ancient glories of his family. While the Pastor and his guest were engaged in this conversation, Ferdinand leaned exhausted in his chair; and had leisure to survey the domestic scene around him; so different from the solitude he had anticipated in _the condemned cell of the heretic Cura of the island_!--From the window of the room in which he now sat, still issued the light he had seen from afar; and which had beaconed his weary steps to his present comfortable station by its source; a cheerful fire, and a cluster of blazing candles on its chimney-piece. Ferdinand could not have been so long in Italy without forming a taste in architecture; and he contemplated with admiring curiosity this specimen of Gothic workmanship. It was of a cinque-foil shape, supported by short columns on brackets, and adorned with a projecting frieze, on which stood the lighted branches, with alabaster vases full of autumnal flowers. It appeared to have been translated from some building of older date; and, indeed, little more than a century before, this very arch had mantled the Abbot's hearth in the good monastery of Lindisfarne.