The wainscot was
white, and there was a Turkey carpet on the floor, so old that it
might have been imported by Walter Shandy before he retired, worn
almost through in some places, but in others making a good show of
blues and oranges, none the less harmonious for being somewhat faded.
The corner cupboard was agreeable in design; and there were just the
right things upon the shelves - decanters and tumblers, and blue
plates, and one red rose in a glass of water. The furniture was old-
fashioned and stiff. Everything was in keeping, down to the
ponderous leaden inkstand on the round table. And you may fancy how
pleasant it looked, all flushed and flickered over by the light of a
brisk companionable fire, and seen, in a strange, tilted sort of
perspective, in the three compartments of the old mirror above the
chimney. As I sat reading in the great armchair, I kept looking
round with the tail of my eye at the quaint, bright picture that was
about me, and could not help some pleasure and a certain childish
pride in forming part of it. The book I read was about Italy in the
early Renaissance, the pageantries and the light loves of princes,
the passion of men for learning, and poetry, and art; but it was
written, by good luck, after a solid, prosaic fashion, that suited
the room infinitely more nearly than the matter; and the result was
that I thought less, perhaps, of Lippo Lippi, or Lorenzo, or
Politian, than of the good Englishman who had written in that volume
what he knew of them, and taken so much pleasure in his solemn
polysyllables.
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