Throughout this scene, as through the whole book, no opportunity is overlooked for giving individuality to the persons introduced:  Sir Hector, of whom we lose sight henceforward, the attache, the Guards-man, are not mere names, but characters:  it is not enough to say that two tables were set apart “for keeper and gillie and peasant:”  there is something to be added yet; and with others assembled around them were “Pipers five or six; among them the young one, the drunkard.”

The morrow’s conversation of the reading party turns on “noble ladies and rustic girls, their partners.”  And here speaks out Hewson the chartist: 

  “’Never (of course you will laugh, but of course all the
    same I shall say it,)
  Never, believe me, revealed itself to me the sexual glory,
  Till, in some village fields, in holidays now getting stupid,
  One day sauntering long and listless, as Tennyson has it,
  Long and listless strolling, ungainly in hobbydihoyhood,
  Chanced it my eye fell aside on a capless bonnetless maiden,
  Bending with three-pronged fork in a garden uprooting potatoes. 
  Was it the air? who can say? or herself? or the charm of the labor? 
  But a new thing was in me, and longing delicious possessed me,
  Longing to take her and lift her, and put her away from her slaving. 
  Was it to clasp her in lifting, or was it to lift her by clasping,
  Was it embracing or aiding was most in my mind?  Hard question. 
  But a new thing was in me:  I too was a youth among maidens. 
  Was it the air? who can say?  But, in part, ’twas the charm of
    the labor.’”

And he proceeds in a rapture to talk on the beauty of household service.

Hereat Arthur remarks:  “’Is not all this just the same that one hears at common room breakfasts, Or perhaps Trinity-wines, about Gothic buildings and beauty?’”—­p. 13.

The character of Hobbes, called into energy by this observation, is perfectly developed in the lines succeeding: 

  “And with a start from the sofa came Hobbes; with a cry from
    the sofa,
  There where he lay, the great Hobbes, contemplative, corpulent,
    witty;
  Author forgotten and silent of currentest phrase and fancy;
  Mute and exuberant by turns, a fountain at intervals playing,
  Mute and abstracted, or strong and abundant as rain in the tropics;
  Studious; careless of dress; inobservant; by smooth persuasions
  Lately decoyed into kilt on example of Hope and the Piper,
  Hope an Antinous mere, Hyperion of calves the Piper..... 
  “‘Ah! could they only be taught,’ he resumed, ’by a Pugin of women
  How even churning and washing, the dairy, the scullery duties,
  Wait but a touch to redeem and convert them to charms and attractions;
  Scrubbing requires for true grace but frank and artistical handling,
  And the removal of slops to be ornamentally treated!”—­pp. 13, 14.