THE sharp quadruplications of Colonsay's incomparable hoofs tooling along the crown of the road, clattered from the cliffs among the echoes of the pattareroe, while the Shuffler, studious of the turf, pitched out in high style, noiseless as a deer on the heather-and thus neck and neck at the rate of sixteen miles an hour, we wheeled round Lowood Bay, leaving behind us the Regatta like a dream. Yet fragments of the vision seemed to float on along with us, lustrous at intervals through openings among the trees, and with our pride of horsemanship was blended a sense of beauty in the fleet ng groves. Fields with pasturing and ruminating cattle seemed swimming away southward, and idle horses neighed to us over hedges, and in an instant were gone. We saw Sammy by our side as if we saw him not; for our eyes-with our whole heart, soul, and mind concentrated in the dilated orbs were now fixed between those long ears, laid back like those of a hare before greyhounds up a hill, and we became a Trot. Oh! that the universe could have beheld us! Such was the vainglorious wish of one then imagining himself more than immortal-when, without one preparatory motion indicative of his purpose, off at right angles flew Colonsay, in ultra-gallop up the formi VOL XXXVI, NO. CCXXIV. dable avenue to Dove's Nest, shaving a jaunting-car-full of parasolled people-on their way down to the low country-and then quiet on the flat before that domicile as an expired whirlwind. There he stood smelling the turf, but not grazinglicking the moist herbage with his foot-long tongue! Our presence of mind and decision of character had even in those days become proverbial, and we ordered a wondering lad, who came to the barn-door with his strawy hair on end, instantly to bring a pail of meal and water. We sympathized with our noble steed— for we knew by experience how intolerable is extreme thirst. Up to his eyes in the pail, what power of suction he displayed! The mealy surface of the delicious draught descended in rapid ebb; and then upsetting the tub-for it was a tubplayfully with his snorting nose-he put about quick as the Liverpoolian herself on the liquid element-and down that almost perpendicular approach-or rather reproach to the vanished House-he re-flew — as if the devil had been chasing him which perhaps he was- and we heard and felt by the crashing that we were now driving our way through a wood. Facilis descensus Averni! we inly breathed. For missing that sharpest of all turns, he had forsaken the avenue, and, de A mented, was taking a short cut to the teous expression of their eyes. "I high-road. But though a short cut, fear thou art feverish, Christopher, it was a severe one; for we knew and thou hadst better take thy place the ground well, having traversed it in our vehicle," said Isaac; but our often in the season of woodcocks, recovery had been almost as rapid as and to effect a footing on the turn- our decline and fall-we were conpike, it was necessary to leap over scious of the return of the roses to an old lime-kiln, from the level our cheeks Colonsay was again thereof, somewhere about twenty firm on his feet-and we promised feet high! Colonsay knew nothing to join our friends at some refreshof the danger, till he was within a ment in the inn at Grassmere. Our few yards of the brink, and had his hat had been left on some tree in the heart failed him, we should have wood, and the cloudless sun, now been mummies. But with a suppress- advanced in heaven, smote our ached shriek he took it—while a Quaker ing temples. The family pitied our with his wife and family from Ken- plight, and Isaac, the good Samaridal, in a one-horse gig, beheld over- tan, without saying a word, put his head in the air a Flying Dragon. Oh! beaver on our head; and at that mothe stun! The soles of our feet felt ment, Colonsay, fresh as a two-yeardriven up into the crown of our old, shot forwards, casting up a not head, while we saw nothing but re- unamused eye on his master, metapeated flashes of lightning and then morphosed into a Broadbrim, and what mortal sickness! Staggering presenting the appearance of an at and shivering like a new dropt foal once venerable and dashing Quaker. was poor Colonsay now-hardly able to sustain our weight-and our belief is that both of us must have swooned. On recovering some of our senses, sorely perplexed were we to make out the meaning of that enormous brim — that measureless breadth of beaver that seemed to canopy us like a dingy sky. Slowly it grew into the hat-head-and face of the most benevolent of brethren-for Isaac Braithwaite was fanning us with his George Fox, and his two lovely daughters, calm in their compassion-demure even in their despair-were standing beside him-while Agatha, sweetest sister of charity, was upholding in her lily hand a horn-cup of cordial, which, soon as it touched our lips, diffused through our being a restoration that reached the very core of our heart. "Friend Christopher, thou art pale! how feelest thou?" said a sweet low voice. "Not paler than thy hand, thou ministering angel." No smile met our reply and verily it was a vain one-for her ear was unacquainted with compliments, and familiar at all times with the language and the tones of truth. No questions were asked whence we came, though to them it must have been a mystery, nor why in such fashion; but on our faintly murmuring that we were engaged in a trotting match, the family looked at one another, and we understood the pi No symptom of Shuffler-but gathering the shore, lo, the Barge! We were now racing the NIL TIMEO"with all her crew complete." How beautifully regular to time the level flashes of the magnificent Ten-oared! Billy-star of steersmen-lying in the stern-sheets-and at every long pull, strong pull, and pull altogether, bending forwards, and retracting his body-to give "Old Nell" an impulse; but the Green Girl of Windermere heeded it not, and beautifully bore along with her all her shadowy pomp, burnishing the bays, and kindling up with her far-felt beauty all the broad bosom of the lake. There sat the Stewartsons, and the Robinsons, and the Dixons, and the Longs, a strong and skilful brotherhood, that would have pulled victoriously against any admiral's gig in the sarvice-had the race been even three leagues out and in, with a stormy sea. But now all was calm as bright and soon subsided the troubled beauty in her wake-leaving no visible pathway on the diamond deep. From her stern towered a living Thistle-for Westmoreland in those days was part of Scotland-and "NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSET" was the sentiment peacefully breathed from every prickly flower resplendent on a Plant, that in its stateliness deserved to be called a Tree. But what crowd of cattle is this? A drove of kyloes! If you try to count them, it must be not by scores, "And all did say, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread; Meanwhile the plot began to The discharge of a whole park of artillery would have been a pig'swhisper to the human roar that then rent the sky. We are at all times loath to indulge in self-laudation; yet we feel that we shall be pardoned for saying that there are few men who, had they been in our situation, would not have trotted onwards without wasting a thought on Sam. But we were of a nobler nature. Inextricably entangled among the kyloes he had not now a chance. It was clear to the most prejudiced observer that we had the race in our own hand. But with a magnanimity deserving this record, we turned about on the saddle and made a speech. Its main purport was a proposal to allow him ten minutes for extrication from his present entanglement-and we concluded with an offer, that thenceforth the parties were to make their way at their own pleasure to Grassmere-without regard to any general or particular road-so that we kept to the trot. Nay, we proposed that on all occasions when either or both of us might chance to be going in a direction unequivocally devious from the turnpike-road, either or both might gallop. Sam said it was all fair-and so it was-for though the Shuffler was the faster gallopper of the two-having been a plate mare-Colonsay knew the country better-and we had never known him in his wildest vagaries get himself into a cul-de-sac. All this while we had utterly forgotten what was on our head. Nor should we have remembered it now, had not a bright lady flung a kiss to us from her palm out of a carriage window, when with a bow, uncovering our grey discrowned head,' we beheld in our right hand the extraordinary concern to which at the moment we were unable to give a name, and had but a dim apprehension of its nature and office. The truth, however, soon dawned upon us, and we delivered it to Angus, who did not venture to form any conjecture respecting its material or functions, with a request that he would transmit it to the legitimate owner in the gig-which he did with the assistance of the Twins, and to the astonishment of the whole drove. We then bound round our temples a pink silk handkerchief, half day and half night cap, with the fringe nattily coming to a point between our shoulders-and lookedso said Ned Hurd-prepared for mischief. Though much drops out between the cup and the lip, it was not so now with Colonsay. The meal and water at Dove's Nest, in quenching his thirst had excited his hunger-and Ned, taking the bit out of his mouth, presented him the sieve full of seed-oats, beautiful as eggs in an ant-hill. Not to seem singular, we too lunched; for we never leave home without a newspaper of ham sandwiches, and the "mountaindew" had "wauken'd that sleeping dowg," our dormant appetite. Seldom have we enjoyed ten minutes of more delightful repose. "The innocent brightness of the new-born Day" was growing into splendid Forenoonhood-with aricher array both of lights and shadows. The eye did not miss the dewdrops, so bright had they left the green earth on their evanishing to heaven. "Our heart rejoiced in Nature's joy"-and as for Windermere, she would not have changed places with the sky. Nor had she any need to do so; for she and the sky now seemed one-and the two, blended together, forgot their own identity in a common world of clouds. Not clouds of vapour, but clouds of light! Alike celestial the purity of the radiant whiteness and of the lucid azure, attempered to perfect harmony as by an angel's breath! And did Imagination so prevail over the senses, that we saw nothing else there among air and water, trees and clouds, but the imagery of her own creations? Now and then a visionary minute was indeed wholly a dream. But gleamings came between of fair realities before our outward eyes, for Windermere now bore on her bosom a hundred sail. It seemed as if a Flight of Swans had dropped upon the lake, and after their aërial voyage were wantoning in the still purer element, that wooed their now folded and their now expanded wings. Nor when they were seen to be what they were-not swans, but barks-were they in that disenchantment less beautiful; for they still seemed instinct with spirit-to obey no will but their own |