CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



often flickering, or seemingly blown out, like a taper 

 in the wind, but all at once self-reillumined, and shin- 

 ing in inextinguishable and self-fed radiance like a 

 star in heaven. 



Therefore, bad as boys too often are and a dis- 

 grace to the mother who bore them the cradle in 

 which they were rocked the nurse by whom they 

 were suckled the schoolmaster by whom they were 

 flogged and the hangman by whom it was prophe- 

 sied they were to be executed wait patiently for 

 a few years, and you will see them all transfigured 

 one into a preacher of such winning eloquence, that 

 he almost persuades all men to be Christians an- 

 other into a parliamentary orator, who commands the 

 applause of listening senates, and 



"Reads his history in a nation's eyes' 1 '' 



one into a painter, before whose thunderous heavens 

 the storms of Poussin "pale their ineffectual fires'" 

 another into a poet composing and playing, side 

 by side, on his own peculiar harp, in a concert of 

 vocal and instrumental music, with Byron, Scott, and 

 Wordsworth one into a great soldier, who, when 

 Wellington is no more, shall, for the freedom of the 

 world, conquer a future Waterloo another who, 

 hoisting his flag on the "mast of some tall ammiral," 

 shall, like Eliab Harvey in the Temeraire, lay two 

 [27] 



