Paul made his acknowledgments, and the whole party proceeded, though the interruption caused such a change in the figure of the promenade, as to leave the young man the immediate escort of Eve. The party, by this time, had not only reached the highway, but it had again diverged from it, to follow the line of an old and abandoned wheel-track, that descended the mountain, along the side of the declivity, by a wilder and more perilous direction than suited a modern enterprise; it having been one of those little calculated and rude roads, that the first settlers of a country are apt to make, before there are time and means to investigate and finish to advantage. Although much more difficult and dangerous than its successor, as a highway, this relic of the infant condition of the country was by far the most retired and beautiful; and pedestrians continued to use it, as a common foot-path to the Vision. The seasons had narrowed its surface, and the second growth had nearly covered it with their branches, shading it like an arbour; and Eve expressed her delight with its wildness and boldness, mingled, as both were, with so pleasant a seclusion, as they descended along a path as safe and convenient as a French allée. Glimpses were constantly obtained of the lake and the village, while they proceeded; and altogether, they who were strangers to the scenery, were loud in its praises.
"Most persons, who see this valley for the first time," observed Aristabulus, "find something to say in its favour; for my part, I consider it as rather curious myself."
"Curious!" exclaimed Paul; "that gentleman is, at least, singular in the choice of his expressions."
"You have met him before to-day," said Eve, laughing, for Eve was now in a humour to laugh at trifles. "This we know, since he had prepared us to meet a poet, where we only find an old friend."
"Only, Miss Effingham!--Do you estimate poets so high, and old friends so low?"
"This extraordinary person, Mr. Aristabulus Bragg, really deranges all one's notions and opinions in such a manner, as to destroy even the usual signification of words, I believe. He seems so much in, and yet so much out of his place; is both so rusé, and so unpractised; so unfit for what he is, and so ready at every thing, that I scarcely know how to apply terms in any matter with which he has the smallest connection. I fear he has persecuted you since your arrival in Templeton?"
"Not at all; I am so much acquainted with men of his cast, that I have acquired a tact in managing them. Perceiving that he was disposed to suspect me of a disposition to 'poetize the lake,' to use his own term, I took care to drop a couple of lines, roughly written off, like a hasty and imperfect effusion, where I felt sure he would find them, and have been living for a whole week on the fame thereof."
"You do indulge in such tastes, then?" said Eve smiling a little saucily.
"I am as innocent of such an ambition, as of wishing to marry the heiress of the British throne, which, I believe, just now, is the goal of all the Icaruses of our own time. I am merely a rank plagiarist--for the rhyme, on the fame of which I have rioted for a glorious week, was two lines of Pope's, an author so effectually forgotten in these palmy days of literature, in which all knowledge seems so condensed into the productions of the last few years, that a man might almost pass off an entire classic for his own, without the fear of detection. It was merely the first couplet of the Essay on Man, which, fortunately, having an allusion to the 'pride of Kings,' would pass for original, as well as excellent, in nineteen villages in twenty in America, in these piping times of ultra-republicanism. No doubt Mr. Bragg thought a eulogy on the 'people' was to come next, to be succeeded by a glorious picture of Templeton and its environs."
"I do not know that I ought to admit these hits at liberty from a foreigner," said Eve, pretending to look graver than she felt; for never before, in her life, had our heroine so strong a consciousness of happiness, as she had experienced that very morning.