What Will He Do with It? — Volume 02Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
What Will He Do with It? — Volume 02
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
English fiction -- 19th century
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 be 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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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