The Beard-Blown Goat. 259 



appear to have no fear whatever, and never fail in their 

 trust of themselves. They make no pauses between their 

 bounds, but spring from point to point, from sliding shingle 

 to hard rock, sharp peak to sloping boulder, without 

 apparently the least calculation — and sometimes they break 

 their legs. So the poets call them " the careless goats ' — 

 Spenser has them '■ dancing on the craggy cUflfs at will," and 

 Montgomery speaks of them " vaulting through the air, as if 

 a thought conveyed them to and fro."' They delight to 

 "hang" them upon "dizzy heights," or make them, as 

 Wordsworth does, frolic " by the side of dashing waterfalls." 



" The vine-mantled brows 

 The pradent goats unveii, regardless they 

 Of hourly peril, tho' the rifted domes 

 Tremble to ev'ry wind."' 



There is, indeed, a fine independence of character about 

 the goat which separates it by many parasangs from the 

 sheep. The latter lives placidly by faith, and seems assured 

 of redemption; the former is possessed by the restless 

 genius of unbelief. You cannot keep goats on the level 

 road, even though you take the greatest possible pains to 

 show them the farmyard and the fold at the end of it. 

 They detest the commonplace. Rather than plod safe'y 

 home by the regular way, they prefer to travel adventurously 

 by paths of their own. By choice, they take the ups and 

 downs of Ufe ; and when they do not find them ready made 

 for them, they make them for themselves. If there is a 

 heap of stones by the roadside, they get up on to it — their 

 spirits at once rise at finding themselves on an eminence : 

 and till the herdsman comes up ihey snatch a precious half- 

 minute in playing •' Tom Tiddler's Ground." If there is a 

 ditch it is just the same. As many goats as possible get down 

 into it and pretend it was in their way. They get among 

 the sheep, and deliberately disorder the woolly procession 



