admire the view before me. A large tract of rich country, undulating on
every side, and teeming with corn fields, in all the yellow gold of
ripeness; here and there, almost hid by small clumps of ash and alder,
were scattered some cottages, from which the blue smoke rose in a
curling column into the calm evening's sky. All was graceful, and
beautifully tranquil; and you might have selected the picture as
emblematic of that happiness and repose we so constantly associate with
our ideas of the country; and yet, before that sun had even set, which
now gilded the landscape, its glories would be replaced by the lurid
glare of nightly incendiarism, and--but here, fortunately for my reader,
and perhaps myself, I am interrupted in my meditations by a rich,
mellifluous accent saying, in the true Doric of the south--

"Mr. Loorequer! you're welcome to Curryglass, sir. You've had a hot day
for your march. Maybe you'd take a taste of sherry before dinner? Well
then, we'll not wait for Molowny, but order it up at once."

So saying, I was ushered into a long, low drawing-room, in which were
collected together about a dozen men, to whom I was specially and
severally presented, and among whom I was happy to find my boarding-house
acquaintance, Mr. Daly, who, with the others, had arrived that same day,
for the assizes, and who were all members of the legal profession, either
barristers, attorneys, or clerks of the peace.

The hungry aspect of the convives, no less than the speed with which
dinner made its appearance after my arrival, showed me that my coming was
only waited for to complete the party--the Mr. Molowny before alluded to,
being unanimously voted present. The meal itself had but slight
pretensions to elegance; there were neither vol au vents, nor croquettes;
neither were there poulets aux truffes, nor cotelletes a la soubise but
in their place stood a lordly fish of some five-and-twenty pounds weight,
a massive sirloin, with all the usual armament of fowls, ham, pigeon-pie,
beef-steak, &c. lying in rather a promiscuous order along either side of
the table. The party were evidently disposed to be satisfied, and I
acknowledge, I did not prove an exception to the learned individuals
about me, either in my relish for the good things, or my appetite to
enjoy them. Dulce est desipere in loco, says some one, by which I
suppose is meant, that a rather slang company is occasionally good fun.
Whether from my taste for the "