GIGANTIC FOLLY NEAR THE TILL. 137 



in lakes when I was a boy, but have been fortunate enough 

 never to take a jack. Yet pike or jack is very good eating, and 

 did I fish for the table, I should not think of despising him. 

 Gourmands tell me that soup made of small perch, quite fresh, 

 that is, taken a short while before, is the most exquisite and the 

 most nourishing of all soups. 



In travelling near the Till we saw, one day, a vast tower 

 "looming in the distance," like Tadmor in the Desert. Yet, 

 somehow, it had not altogether the air of a ruin, so we made for 

 it. It was a gigantic folly, the produce of a mind disturbed by 

 the laws of primogeniture, baronial privileges, feudal rights, 

 entail. It had ruined its unhappy proprietors. What it had 

 already cost, I will not venture to say, but it was without a roof, 

 windows, doors, or furniture of any description. It reminded 

 me of what Vincennes would look like in ruins. The rooks flew 

 in and the rooks flew out, and ever as ten thousand pounds were 

 laid out on it, other ten thousand were wanted to repair the 

 damage of last winter's storms. It was a sad spectacle. 



Again I visited the Till, but with another companion. We 

 fished the same stream early in May ; the easterly wind blew 

 cold, and the day was cheerless and melancholy. Never remain 

 on the stream side when the east winds are blowing, pinching up 

 fair nature's face, and making all things look hideous. My 

 companion was the type whence the clever author of Pickwick 

 has drawn his Alfred Jingle, Esquire. Type, did I say ? But 

 for a slight anachronism, I would have sworn to their identity. 

 Even he could not rouse our spirits ; so we spurred homewards, 

 crossing the plains of Northumberland, the wooded glades of 

 Berwickshire, and gaining the northern slope of the Lammermuir 

 soon saw the Crag of Salisbury and Arthur's Seat. 



Jingle now sleeps, not with his fathers, but with Franklin, at 

 the bottom, of the Frozen Ocean, awaiting the next geological 

 revolution, when a new order of things shall arise, and the men 

 of that day, should there be any, speculate on the position which 

 Jingle may have held in the animated creation. He has with 

 him, I believe, three or four feet cut from off the legs of Chinese 

 women, and preserved in spirits. What future geologists will 

 say of this I cannot imagine. 



