years of age) put it to his lips when full,
incline it gradually from an acute to a right
angle, tip it bottom upward, and finally
set it down empty without remark;
sometimes it was only a cracked tea-cup, which
made the beer and cider look both like
camomile tea (we noticed indeed among
the thirteen hundred, but one glass drinking
vessel), but what did that matter? Clasp-
knives were, upon the whole, the most
fashionable cutting instruments, but we took much
interest in the young lady who got on
uncommonly well with a leaden spoon. There were
ludicrous scenes in so great a picture, of
course; but there were very beautiful ones
also; a widowed father—just widowed, to
judge by the new, but scanty, strip of crape
round his worn hat—had cut his meat up
small that the child on his knee might feed
with him, and they took alternate morsels
together, and alternate sips at their common
mug; there was a blind girl, evidently very
pleased at the many voices and the music, to
whom everybody seemed kind and attentive;
and a cripple, for whom the good folk made
way to right and left, that he might have his
meal in comfort. It was pleasant to watch
the lovers taking care of their mistresses, and
to mark how much flirtation can be carried
on in company and over pudding; to see the
play of the knives and forks grow slower and
slower as the appetites of the wielders began
to fail, and how the younger portion of them
dropped otf to sleep immediately upon having
filled themselves to the uttermost, as if there
was no such disease as apoplexy known; to
behold the parson mount the upholsterer's
steps, which had been placed in the centre of
the green for that purpose, and pronounce
the grace therefrom, and to see him descend
from that dangerous and shaky elevation
safe and sound; pleasant also when the
shower came—it only lasted eleven
minutes—to view the whole thirteen hundred
(it was just before their dinner) making for
the mere rag of canvas which scarcely
covered the band, and deriving apparent
comfort, if not dryness, from its mere
proximity; to mark the Carvers, the
Hewers of meat and the Drawers of beer
getting redder and redder at their work, and
endeavouring vainly to avoid a repetition of
helps by dint—literally dint—of leviathan
slices. To hear the speeches, too, after
dinner, and over the strong ale, screamed to
the thirteen hundred from the summit of the
steps; how the squire gave "the Queen, with
musical cheers," which a part of the company
took to mean the National Anthem, and
how great tumult, but infinite loyalty thereupon
ensued; how the parson declared that
we were indebted for the peace to Providence
rather than to our governors and our generals,
which was a truer thing, perhaps, than
he quite intended to say; how a stout female
would on no account permit the health of
the ladies to pass by, unacknowledged, and
diverged from the general subject into a
particular statement regarding the increase of
her private family; how the wit of the little
town, who had hitherto hung his head down
like a peony, in blushful silence, was
induced by admiring friends and beer, to
propose the Squire, and who gave it as his
opinion that the best of all possible peaces
had happened to them that day, a good piece
of roast beef, and a good piece of plum-
pudding; how it was thought better, out of delicacy
to many present who had lost near
relatives in this unhappy war, that the health of
our Crimean heroes should not be given, and
how a labourer, whose only son had fallen at
Alma, proposed it himself in a manner that
would not have disgraced Mr. Burke—dagger
and all. And so, mostly in mirth, but partly
with a certain pleasant seriousness, the
thirteen hundred dined. Of all that mighty
company we saw but one man drunk, and
even on him intoxication took a harmonising
effect, and caused him to shake hands with
us, with tears in his eyes, as though we were
about to emigrate.

Afterwards there were sports and games
enough—for the whole afternoon was holiday
—amongst the children; music and dancing
for the adults, and tea arid gossip—gossip
pointed at their own expense—for the old
folk. It was a strange sight to see the boys
leap off at highest spring from the summit of
the sandclifts—thirty, forty, and even fifty
feet of almost sheer descent—alighting always
upon the yielding soil; there was no hurt
beyond a sprain or two (with the exception
of one boy who came upon his nose, which
happened to be a very projecting feature,
instead of his legs, and who said he didn't
care). It was capital fun, they said, although
to us, we confess, it looked much more like
determined suicide.

It was a merry, merry day to all at Malden,
and surely one of peace if not of quietness.
While the soothing strains of the last tune
were failing upon the summer air, and
mingling musically with the dying peal
from out the grey church tower, we took our
leave, and rode back through the same soft
scenes again. The dewy pastures, dewy fields,
the haunts of ancient peace; in the dreamy
caw of the rook slow flapping to its lofty nest,
in the calm persistence of the cuckoo's farewell
note, in the last twitter of the lark as it
floated earthward to its grassy home, Peace
seemed alike to whisper; in the last good-bye
as we turned from the crowded highway into
the leafy lane, and in the slumbrous silence
of the night as we climbed the hill.