Chorus of Youths
Years glide! it is Manhood. He is in the fierce Camp: he is in the deceitful Court. He must mingle sometimes with others, that he may be always with her! In the false world, she is to him like a green olive among rocks!
Chorus of Youths and Maidens
Years glide! it is Old Age. They sit beneath a branching elm. As the moon rises on the sunset green, their children dance before them! Her hand is in his; they look upon their children, and then upon each other!
“The fellow has some fancy,” said the old Lord, “but given, I think, to conceits. I did not exactly catch the passage about the bridge, but I have no doubt it was all right.”
Vivian was now invited to the pavilion, where refreshments were prepared. Here our hero was introduced to many other guests, relations of the family, who were on a visit at the castle, and who had been on the lake at the moment of his arrival.
“This gentleman,” said the old Lord, pointing to Vivian, “is my son’s friend, and I am quite sure that you are all delighted to see him. He arrived here accidentally, his carriage having fortunately broken down in passing one of the streams. All those rivulets should have bridges built over them! I could look at my new bridge for ever. I often ask myself, ‘Now, how can such a piece of masonry ever be destroyed?’ It seems quite impossible, does not it? We all know that everything has an end; and yet, whenever I look at that bridge, I often think that it can only end when all things end.”
In the evening they all waltzed upon the green. The large yellow moon had risen, and a more agreeable sight than to witness two or three hundred persons so gaily occupied, and in such a scene, is not easy to imagine. How beautiful was the stern old castle, softened by the moonlight, the illumined lake, the richly-silvered foliage of the woods, and the white brilliant cataract!
As the castle was quite full of visitors, its hospitable master had lodged Vivian for the night at the cottage of one of his favourite tenants. Nothing would give greater pleasure to Vivian than this circumstance, nor more annoyance to the worthy old gentleman.
The cottage belonged to the victor in the Regatta, who himself conducted the visitor to his dwelling. Vivian did not press Essper’s leaving the revellers, so great an acquisition did he seem to their sports! teaching them a thousand new games, and playing all manner of antics; but perhaps none of his powers surprised them more than the extraordinary facility and freedom with which he had acquired and used all their names. The cottager’s pretty wife had gone home an hour before her husband, to put her two fair-haired children to bed and prepare her guest’s accommodation for the night. Nothing could be more romantic and lovely than the situation of the cottage. It stood just on the gentle slope of the mountain’s base, not a hundred yards from the lower waterfall. It was in the middle of a patch of highly-cultivated ground, which bore creditable evidence to the industry of its proprietor. Fruit trees, Turkey corn, vines, and flax flourished in luxuriance. The dwelling itself was covered with myrtle and arbutus, and the tall lemon-plant perfumed the window of the sitting-room. The casement of Vivian’s chamber opened full on the foaming cataract. The distant murmur of the mighty waterfall, the gentle sighing of the trees, the soothing influence of the moonlight, and the faint sounds occasionally caught of dying revelry, the joyous exclamation of some successful candidate in the day’s games, the song of some returning lover, the plash of an oar in the lake: all combined to produce that pensive mood in which we find ourselves involuntarily reviewing the history of our life.