1 _Froissart's Chronicles_, book iv., chap. 64.
2 _Lockhart's Life of Scott_, vol. iii., chap. xv.
Reaching the summit, we pass through a tunnel, hewn in the _solid_ rock (why do we use this adjective always, as though rocks were ordinarily in a state of fusion?), and leave county _Kerry_ for _Cork_.
Graduates and undergraduates (O my brothers, how gladly shall I meet you once again, when the long vacation is past!), did you ever dine, as I have dined, with an elderly Don, severe in deportment and of boundless lore, who happened to be at once the author of a great treatise on “_the Verbs in [Greek]_,” and (strange antithesis!) of a pretty daughter? If so, you will remember that hour of solemn converse, before the coffee was announced, when the grave Professor, broad of brow, took you, as it were, by the hand up the solemn heights of _Olympus_, and showed to you, awfully admiring, the grand sublimities of _Longinus_, the sombre valleys of _Parnassus_, and Philosophy's everlasting hills. And memory will suggest to you, more happily, more vividly, how, summoned by the butler, you at length came down from those amazing steeps, entered the drawing-room, found the pretty daughter; and, while papa chuckled in the distance, over a play of _Aristophanes_, easy to his apprehension as _Buckstone_ to ours, discoursed to her of the Commemoration Ball, and forgot _Minerva_ in the sunnier presence of _Aphrodiet_.
And you, my general readers, you, who, with that refinement of taste for which you are remarkable above all other readers, go to Concerts at the Hanover Square Rooms in the season, and, out of it, to dingy County Halls, whenever the Italians sing,--you, too, must help me with an analogy, and say,--can you not recall how, amid all that severe and stately music, some plaintive ballad, quaint madrigal, or hearty glee, refreshed your weary spirit, and won the sole encore? It was so, at all events, when last I went to an Operatic Meeting in the Halls of Crystal; and Alboni sang; and Giuglini sang; and of Inis and Icos good store; and we beat time, and “wasn't it delicious?”; but no song went home to our English hearts, roused us from our lethargic and drear gentility, and made us clap our English hands, save the song of “_The Hardy Norsemen_.”