60 MEMOIR OF THOMAS 



preacher, by his clerical attitude you might take 

 him for a very parson. Cast your eye on the 

 gipsies and their bear; are not thief and harlot 

 marked in their physiognomies ? That first fellow's 

 coat is too big for him, a world too wide ; he has 

 stolen it. Look with luxury on the light and 

 buoyant cutter, dancing on the dashing waves, in 

 pursuit of the heavy smuggler, straining and creaking 

 in the breeze, laboriously making off in the misty 

 moonlight. The lame man has left his crutch be- 

 hind, having mounted the back of the blind, who 

 has let go his dog : hasty attachments imagine 

 friendship eternal. That poor spaniel bitch has 

 been howling all night, and has just broken her 

 string, and found her drowned puppies : look at her 

 sudden pause and sorrow ! Ay, friend Bewick, 

 many a lobster handles a pencil, and piddles on a 

 set palette. Do stop your ears at opening to the two 

 fiddlers, with their jangling discordant scrapings. 

 I truly pity their hearts who hear not the howling 

 of that scalded dog who has overturned the pot ; 

 and the cackling of that hen who has just been 

 laying. Oh ! what a feast of diverting and instruc- 

 tive amusement for an idle summer's day, or a long 

 winter's night ! What a rich and exhaustless suc- 

 cession of grotesque figures, funny groups, comical 

 scenes, pithy inscriptions, delicious landscapes, vil- 

 lage farmsteads, rocky caverns, tufts of. fern, river 

 glens and cascades, quiet pools and sedgy knolls, 

 lovely trees and woody dells, towns and towers, 

 ivied ruins, sea-side views, with sermons in every 



