It needs not, here, to dwell on the strange dainties, the now long-disused and unaccustomed viands and beverages of those old days, more than on the romantic feudal usages and abstruse ceremonials of the day; suffice it that, to their palates, heronshaw, egret and peacock, venison and boar's-meat, and chines of the wild bull, were no less dainty than the choicest of our modern luxuries to the beaux and belles of the nineteenth century; and that hypocras and pigment, morat and mead and clary, made the pulses burn and the cheeks mantle as blythely and as brightly as Champagne or Burgundy. The ball, for the nobles in the castle-hall, for the commons on the castle-green, followed the feast; but not till the stocking had been thrown, and the curtain drawn, and the beautiful bride fairly bedded, was the nuptial ceremony esteemed fully ended, which gave the lovely Guendolen, for weal and not for woe, to the brave and faithful Aradas de Ratcliffe. The raptures of lovers are not to be described; and if the pen of the ready-writer may gain inspiration to delineate the workings of strong mental passions, of intense moral or physical excitements, to depict stormy wrath, the agonies of hope deferred, the slow-consuming pangs of hopeless regret, there is one thing that must ever defy his powers of representation--the calm enjoyment of every-day domestic happiness; the easy and unvarying pleasures of contentment; the placid routine of hourly duties, hourly delights, hourly labors, hourly affections; and that soft intermixture of small cares and passing sorrows, with great blessings tasted, and great gratitudes due, which make up the sum of the most innocent and blessed human life. And such was the life of Sir Aradas and the fair Guendolen de Ratcliffe, until, to borrow the quaint phrase of the narrator of those incomparable tales of the Thousand and One Nights, "they were visited by the terminator of delights, and the separator of companions. Extolled be the perfection of the Living, who dieth not!" Sir Yvo de Taillebois lived long enough to see his child's children gathered to his knee; to prognosticate, in their promise, fresh honors to his high-born race; but not so long as to outlive his intellect, his powers to advise, console, enjoy, and, above all, to trust in God. Full of years and full of honors, he was gathered to his fathers in the ripeness of his time, and he sleeps in a quiet churchyard in his native valley, where a green oak-tree shades his ashes, and the ever-vocal music of the rippling Kent sings his sweet, natural requiem.