CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



fud at you from the top of a knowe open to blasts 

 from all the airts; in short, he who knows at all 

 times where to find a hare, even if he knew not one 

 single thing else but the way to his mouth, cannot 

 be called an ignorant man is probably a better- 

 informed man in the long run than the friend on 

 his right, discoursing about the Turks, the Greeks, 

 the Portugals, and all that sort of thing, giving him- 

 self the lie on every arrival of his daily paper. We 

 never yet knew an old courser, (him of the Sporting 

 Annals included,) who was not a man both of abilities 

 and virtues. But where were we? at the Trysting- 

 hill Farmhouse, jocularly called Hunger- them-Out. 



Line is formed, and with measured steps we march 

 towards the hills for we ourselves are the schoolboy, 

 bold, bright, and blooming as the rose fleet of foot 

 almost as the very antelope Oh! now, alas! dim and 

 withered as a stalk from which winter has swept all 

 the blossoms slow as the sloth along the ground 

 spindle-shanked as a lean and slippered pantaloon! 



"O heaven! that from our bright and shining years 

 Age would but take the thing's youth heeded not!' 1 '' 



An old shepherd meets us on the long sloping rushy 

 ascent to the hills and putting his brown withered 

 finger to his gnostic nose, intimates that she is in her 

 old form behind the dike and the noble dumb ani- 

 [35] 



