The English Spy, page 29 by Bernard Blackmantle
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attractive hue, and the objects of this world assume a grace divine: then it is that happiness, borne on the wings of innocence and light-hearted mirth, attends our every step, and seems to wait obedient to our will.
What a painful reverse may not the retrospective view afford! how unlike is the finished picture to the inspiring sketch. The one breathing the soft air of nature, and sparkling in brilliant tints of variegated hues, serene, clear, and transparent, like the magic pencilling of the heavenly Claude, shedding ambrosial sweets around. The reverse indistinct, and overpowered with gloomy shadows, a mixture of the terrific and the marvellous, like the stormy and convulsive scenes of the mighty genius of Salvator Rosa, with here and there a flash of wildest eccentricity, that only serves to render more visible the murky deformity of the whole.
Horatio had just finished his introductory rhapsody, when the door opened, and my aunt's servant entered with tea and toast: the simmering of the water round the heated tube of the urn, tingling in the ears of Heartly, broke the thread of his narration. There was a pause of nearly a minute, while John was busy in arranging the equipage. "You should have waited till I had rung, John," said my aunt. "Please your ladyship," said John, "you directed me always to bring tea in at six precisely, without waiting for orders." My aunt looked puzzled: "You are right, John, I did; and (addressing Horatio) the fault of the interruption must therefore rest with me." Horatio bowed; the compliment was too flattering to be ~24~~ misunderstood. "Draw the curtains, John," said my aunt, "and make up the fire: we can help ourselves to what we want--you need not wait; and do not interrupt us again until you are rung for." "This is very mysterious," thought John, as he closed to the drawing-room door; and he related what he thought to my lady's maid, when he returned to the servants' hall. "You are, no conjurer, John," said Mrs. Margaret, with an oblique inclination of the head