"Because we had nothing but fire-flies to light us," replied Gowrie, "and Mr. Rhind took the first we saw for falling stars."
"Though there were no stars in the sky to fall," cried Hume; "or if they had fallen, they would have been caught in the thick blanket of cloud, and tossed up again."
"Well, my young friend," said meek Mr. Rhind, "they were the first I ever saw, you know, and every man may make a mistake."
"I wonder you did not take them for the burning bush," said Hume, a little irreverently; "for, my dear Rhind, you had had the Old Testament in your mouth from the moment we left Mantua, and you had paid our bill to the Moabitish woman who cheated us so fearfully. You called her by every gentile name you could muster, simply because she would have twenty scudi more than her due."
"Well, I own I loved her not," replied Mr. Rhind.
"But she did not want you to love her!" retorted Hume; "she wanted Gowrie to love her, and he would not; so she charged the twenty scudi for the disappointment; and all she wanted with you was to pay the money."
"Which I certainly would not have done, if I could have helped it," replied Mr. Rhind.
"But you could not, my dear sir," said Lord Gowrie; "depend upon it, Rhind, there is no striving against woman, circumstances, or an innkeeper's bill; and it is only waste of words and time to contest a point with either."
"I am sorry you find it so, my dear lord," replied Mr. Rhind, somewhat tartly, for he had been rather hardly pressed by his young companions' gay humour during the morning. Lord Gowrie only laughed, however, for his heart was very light. He was returning to her he loved; he had known few sorrows since his very early years, and each step of his horse's foot seemed, to hope and fancy, to bring him nearer to happiness. He could have jested at that moment good-humouredly with a fiend; and certainly Mr. Rhind did not deserve that name. The young earl, however, saw clearly that his former preceptor was somewhat annoyed, and he consequently changed the subject, stretching out his hand, and saying, "Behold the mighty Po. I know not how it is, but this river, about the part where we are now, though less in course and in volume than either the Rhine, the Rhone, or the Danube, always gives me more the idea of a great river than they do. Perhaps it may be even from the lack of beautiful scenery. With the others we lose the grandeur of the river in the grandeur of its banks. Here the broad stream comes upon us in the dead flat plain, without anything to distract the attention or engage the eye. I am inclined to believe that a river, as a river, is always more striking when there is no other great object to be seen."
"And yet to me," said Hume, "the ocean itself, simply as the ocean, without storms to lash it into magnificent fury, or rocky shores to hem it in, like a defending and attacking army, but seen from a plain sandy shore upon a calm day, is not half so sublime a sight as poets and enthusiasts would have us believe. There is a great deal of quackery in poetry, don't you think so, Gowrie? Poets bolster themselves and one another up with associations and images, till they believe things to be very sublime, which abstractedly are very insignificant. I remember once standing upon a low beach, and putting the whole sea out, by holding up a kerchief at arm's length. I have never since been able to think it sublime except during a storm."