Mr. Darrell, crossing the hall, threw open a door opposite to that by which Lionel entered, and the lake (we will so call it) lay before them,--separated from the house only by a shelving gradual declivity, on which were a few beds of flowers,--not the most in vogue nowadays, and disposed in rambling old-fashioned parterres. At one angle, a quaint and dilapidated sun-dial; at the other, a long bowling-alley, terminated by one of those summer-houses which the Dutch taste, following the Revolution of 1688, brought into fashion. Mr. Darrell passed down this alley (no bowls there now), and observing that Lionel looked curiously towards the summer-house, of which the doors stood open, entered it. A lofty room with coved ceiling, painted with Roman trophies of helms and fasces, alternated with crossed fifes and fiddles, painted also. “Amsterdam manners,” said Mr. Darrell, slightly shrugging his shoulders. “Here a former race heard music, sang glees, and smoked from clay pipes. That age soon passed, unsuited to English energies, which are not to be united with Holland phlegm! But the view from the window-look out there. I wonder whether men in wigs and women in hoops enjoyed that. It is a mercy they did not clip those banks into a straight canal!” The view was indeed lovely,--the water looked so blue and so large and so limpid, woods and curving banks reflected deep on its peaceful bosom. “How Vance would enjoy this!” cried Lionel. “It would come into a picture even better than the Thames.” “Vance? who is Vance?” “The artist,--a great friend of mine. Surely, sir, you have heard of him or seen his pictures!” “Himself and his pictures are since my time. Days tread down days for the recluse, and he forgets that celebrities rise with their suns, to wane with their moons, “‘Truditur dies die, Novaeque pergunt interire lunae’” “All suns do not set; all moons do not wane!” cried Lionel, with blunt enthusiasm. “When Horace speaks elsewhere of the Julian star, he compares it to a moon--‘inter ignes minores’--and surely Fame is not among the orbs which ‘pergunt interire,’--hasten on to perish!” “I am glad to see that you retain your recollections of Horace,” said Mr. Darrell, frigidly, and without continuing the allusion to celebrities; “the most charming of all poets to a man of my years, and” (he very dryly added) “the most useful for popular quotation to men at any age.”