Here and there the marble plates had slipped from their places, where the delicate weeds had forced their way.

The graceful wildness which prevailed in garden and farm gave place to a singular nicety about the actual habitation, and a still more scrupulous sweetness and order reigned within.

The old Roman architects seem to have well understood the decorative value of the floor--the real economy there was, in the production of rich interior effect, of a somewhat lavish expenditure upon the surface they trod on.

The pavement of the hall had lost something of its evenness; but, though a little rough to the foot, polished and cared for like a piece of silver, looked, as mosaic-work is apt to do, its best in old age.

Most noticeable among the ancestral masks, each in its little cedarn chest below the cornice, was that of the wasteful but elegant Marcellus, with the quaint resemblance in its yellow waxen features to Marius, just then so full of animation and country colour.