CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



nibbled verdure, lets him bounce about till he is tired, 

 and lies gasping with unfrequent and feeble motions, 

 bright and beautiful, and glorious with all his yellow 

 light and crimson lustre, spotted, speckled, and starred 

 in his scaly splendour, beneath a sun that never shone 

 before so dazzlingly; but now the radiance of the cap- 

 tive creature is dimmer and obscured, for the eye of 

 day winks and seems almost shut behind that slow- 

 sailing mass of clouds, composed in equal parts of air, 

 rain, and sunshine. 



Springs, summers, autumns, winters — each within 

 itself longer, by many times longer than the whole 

 year of grown-up life, that slips at last through one''s 

 fingers like a knotless thread — pass over the curled 

 darling's brow; and look at him now, a straight and 

 strengthy stripling, in the savage spirit of sport, 

 springing over rock-ledge after rock-ledge, nor heed- 

 ing aught as he plashes knee-deep, or waistband -high, 

 through river-feeding torrents, to the glorious mu- 

 sic of his running and ringing reel, after a tongue- 

 hooked salmon, insanely seeking wdth the ebb of tide, 

 but all in vain, the white breakers of the sea. No 

 hazel or willow wand, no half-crown rod of ash framed 

 by village wright, is now in his practised hands, of 

 which the very left is dexterous; but a twenty -feet rod 

 of Phin'*s, all ring-rustling, and a-glitter with the pre- 

 serving varnish, limber as the attenuating line itself, 

 [7] 



