while watching the quiet loveliness of a Claude, or the spiritual beauty of a Raphael, would be a curious study: but the guests he had now assembled were intent on no such curious speculations; they were quite content with the external, without examining into the interior, world.
It would have been difficult to have imagined a scene more like one in fairyland, than the scene as the guests again dispersed through the grounds. The sunset had been magnificent, and the Thames was floating in dark radiance; the waves wearing that transparent clearness, which gives more the idea of melted beryl, than aught else: every little circle in the water had that trembling light which characterises precious stones. The atmosphere was unusually clear, as if loath to part with the daylight; but the moon, like a round of lucid snow, had risen on the sky; and a pale, soft gleam, came from the lamps amid the foliage.
One device obtained great admiration: small lights were scattered on the ground, in some of the winding paths of turf, to emulate
