Was it this? or tell me, Nature, what else it was that made this morsel so sweet; and to what magic I owe it, that the draught I took of their flagon was so delicious with it, that they remain upon my palate to this hour.

If the supper was to my taste, the grace which followed it was much more so.

THE GRACE
[Sidenote:  Sterne]

When supper was over the old man gave a knock upon the table with the haft of his knife, to bid them prepare for the dance.  The moment the signal was given, the women and girls ran off together into a back apartment to tie up their hair, and the young men to the door to wash their faces and change their sabots; and in three minutes every soul was ready upon a little esplanade before the house to begin.  The old man and his wife came out last, and, placing me betwixt them, sat down upon a sofa of turf by the door.

The old man had, some fifty years ago, been no mean performer upon the vielle; and at the age he was then of, touched it well enough for the purpose.  His wife sang now and then a little to the tune, then intermitted and joined her old man again, as their children and grandchildren danced before them.

It was not till the middle of the second dance, when, for some pauses in the movements wherein they all seemed to look up, I fancied I could distinguish an elevation of spirit different from that which is the cause of the effect of simple jollity.  In a word, I thought I beheld religion mixing in the dance; but, as I had never seen her so engaged, I should have looked upon it now as one of the illusions of an imagination which is eternally misleading me, had not the old man, as soon as the dance ended, said that this was their constant way; and that all his life long he had made it a rule, after supper was over, to call out his family to dance and rejoice; “believing,” he said, “that a cheerful and contented mind was the best sort of thanks to Heaven that an illiterate peasant could pay”—­

“Or a learned prelate either,” said I.

HINTS FOR AN HISTORICAL PLAY; TO BE CALLED WILLIAM RUFUS; OR, THE RED
ROVER
[Sidenote:  Ingoldsby]

Act 1

  Walter Tyrrel, the son of a Norman papa,
  Has, somehow or other, a Saxon mama: 
  Though humble, yet far above mere vulgar loons,
  He’s a sort of a sub in the Rufus dragoons;
  Has travelled, but comes home abruptly, the rather
  That some unknown rascal has murder’d his father;
  And scarce has he picked out, and stuck in his quiver,
  The arrow that pierced the old gentleman’s liver,
  When he finds, as misfortunes come rarely alone,
  That his sweetheart has bolted—­with whom is not known. 
  But, as murder will out, he at last finds the lady
  At court with her character grown rather shady: 
  This gives him the “blues,” and impairs the delight
  He’d have otherwise felt when they dub him a Knight
  For giving a runaway stallion a check,
  And preventing his breaking King Rufus’s neck.