At the end of the third set, supper was announced; and the party, pairing off like turtles, adjourned to the supper-room.  The squire was now the happiest of mortal men, and the little butler the most laborious.  The centre of the largest table was decorated with a model of Snowdon, surmounted with an enormous artificial leek, the leaves of angelica, and the bulb of blancmange.  A little way from the summit was a tarn, or mountain-pool, supplied through concealed tubes with an inexhaustible flow of milk-punch, which, dashing in cascades down the miniature rocks, fell into the more capacious lake below, washing the mimic foundations of Headlong Hall.  The reverend doctor handed Miss Philomela to the chair most conveniently situated for enjoying this interesting scene, protesting he had never before been sufficiently impressed with the magnificence of that mountain, which he now perceived to be well worthy of all the fame it had obtained.

“Now, when they had eaten and were satisfied,” Squire Headlong called on Mr Chromatic for a song; who, with the assistance of his two accomplished daughters, regaled the ears of the company with the following

        TERZETTO[13.2]

    Grey Twilight, from her shadowy hill,
      Discolours Nature’s vernal bloom,
    And sheds on grove, and field, and rill,
      One placid tint of deepening gloom.

    The sailor sighs ’mid shoreless seas,
      Touched by the thought of friends afar,
    As, fanned by ocean’s flowing breeze,
      He gazes on the western star.

    The wanderer hears, in pensive dream,
      The accents of the last farewell,
    As, pausing by the mountain stream,
      He listens to the evening bell.

This terzetto was of course much applauded; Mr Milestone observing, that he thought the figure in the last verse would have been more picturesque, if it had been represented with its arms folded and its back against a tree; or leaning on its staff, with a cockle-shell in its hat, like a pilgrim of ancient times.

Mr Chromatic professed himself astonished that a gentleman of genuine modern taste, like Mr Milestone, should consider the words of a song of any consequence whatever, seeing that they were at the best only a species of pegs, for the more convenient suspension of crotchets and quavers.  This remark drew on him a very severe reprimand from Mr Mac Laurel, who said to him, “Dinna ye ken, sir, that soond is a thing utterly worthless in itsel, and only effectual in agreeable excitements, as far as it is an aicho to sense?  Is there ony soond mair meeserable an’ peetifu’ than the scrape o’ a feddle, when it does na touch ony chord i’ the human sensorium?  Is there ony mair divine than the deep note o’ a bagpipe, when it breathes the auncient meelodies o’ leeberty an’ love?  It is true, there are peculiar trains o’ feeling an’ sentiment, which parteecular combinations o’ meelody are calculated