CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



— and lies at last in all her glorious length and 

 breadth of beaming beauty, fit prey for giant or 

 demigod angling before the Flood! 



''The child is father of the man. 

 And I woidd wish my days to he 

 Bound each to each hy natural piety T 



So much for the Angler. The Shooter, again, he 

 begins with his pipe-gun, formed of the last year's 

 growth of a branch of the plane-tree — the beautiful 

 dark -green -leaved and fragrant -flowered plane-tree 

 — that stands straight in stem and round in head, 

 visible and audible too from afar the bee-resounding 

 umbrage, alike on stormy sea-coast and in sheltered 

 inland vale, still loving the roof of the fisherman's or 

 peasant's cottage. 



Then comes, perhaps, the city pop-gun, in shape 

 like a very musket, such as soldiers bear — a Christ- 

 mas present from parent, once a colonel of volunteers 

 — nor feeble to discharge the pea-bullet or barley- 

 shot, formidable to face and eyes; nor yet unfelt, at 

 six paces, by hinder-end of playmate, scornfully yet 

 fearfully exposed. But the shooter soon tires of such 

 ineffectual trigger — and his soul, as well as his hair, 

 is set on fire by that extraordinary compound — Gun- 

 powder. He begins with burning off his eyebrows on 

 the King's birthday; squibs and crackers follow, and 



[11 ] 



