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Once, on the Queen having expressed some curiosity in regard to the Irish national dances, Grace made sign to her harper, a wild-eyed, white-haired, long-bearded old gentleman, who struck up a stirring Celtic air, and instantly her warlike followers rushed into the midst of the hall, and began dancing, in the strangest, maddest way imaginable.

But now it is different: look at the number of cloaks and sticks and wallets that are about; everywhere philosophers, long-bearded, book in hand, maintain your cause; the public walks are filled with their contending hosts, and every man of them calls Virtue his nurse.

One day, however, a long-bearded old man, with a gold-tipped wand of office, who had a bull's head embroidered on his robe, stopped in front of me and, calling me a white-headed crow, asked me what I was doing hopping day by day about the chambers of the palace. I told him my name and business and he told me his, which it seemed was Pambasa, one of the Prince's chamberlains.

Yonder stalked savages, naked except for their girdles, and armed with huge spears, who gazed with bewilderment on the wonders of this mart of the white man; there moved grave, long-bearded Arab merchants or Phoenicians in their pointed caps, or bare-headed white-robed Egyptians, or half-bred mercenaries clad in mail.

Ere nightfall I hauled my skiff high and dry on the beach, laden with red rock-cod or the white-bellied ones of deep water, haddock bearing the black marks of St. Peter's fingers near the gills, the long-bearded hake whose liver holds oil enough for a midnight lamp, and now and then a mighty halibut with a back broad as my boat. In the autumn I toled and caught those lovely fish the mackerel.

After him, two by two, the snowy-robed, long-bearded priests of Demeter; behind these the noisy corps of musicians, and then a host of young men and women,—bright of eye, graceful of movement,—twirling long chains of ivy, laurel, and myrtle in time to the music. Palm branches were everywhere.

A short, thin man, of the cracker type, swarthy, long-bearded, and untidy, he was dressed in well-worn civilian costume, with the exception of an old blue coat showing dim remnants of military garniture.

Clashed the beakers of Atli, Wine-laden on bench, As in hall there a-gathered, The Huns fell a-talking, And the long-bearded eager ones Entered therein, From a murk den new-come, From the murder of Gunnar.

But some of his fellow pupils afterwards told how, in the dusky twilight, they had seen a one-eyed man, long-bearded, and clad in a cloud-gray kirtle, and wearing a sky-blue hood, talking with Siegfried at the smithy door.

Two gentlemen I use the term advisedly mounted the rostrum, one a long-bearded, middle-aged man, in a frock coat, who was the pastor, and another an aged minister, superannuated, as I afterwards discovered, and not altogether happy in his worldly lot. He was very old, grey-haired, and feeble, with a worn suit of clerical black, and a voluminous white tie.