CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



hour he will be turning up his little finger so — on 

 the Cobler's head ; or, in twenty minutes, gliding like 

 a swan, or shooting like a salmon, his back being still 

 straught — leaving Luss, he will be shaking the dew- 

 drops from his brawny body on the silver sand of Inch 

 Morren. 



And happy were we, Christopher North, happy 

 were we in the parish in which Fate delivered us 

 up to Nature, that, under her tuition, our destinies 

 might be fulfilled. A parish! Why it was in itself a 

 kingdom — a world. Thirty miles long by twenty at 

 the broadest, and five at the narrowest; and is not 

 that a kingdom — is not that a world worthy of any 

 monarch that ever wore a crown? Was it level .^ Yes, 

 league-long levels were in it of greensward, hard as 

 the sand of the sea-shore, yet springy and elastic, fit 

 training ground for Childers, or Eclipse, or Hamble- 

 tonian, or Smolensko, or for a charge of cavalry in 

 some great pitched battle, while artillery might keep 

 playing against artillery from innumerous affronting 

 hills. Was it boggy? Yes, black bogs were there, 

 which extorted a panegyric from the roving Irish- 

 man in his richest brogue — bogs in which forests had 

 of old been buried, and armies with all their banners. 

 Was it hilly? Ay, there the white sheep nibbled, and 

 the black cattle grazed; there they baa'd and they 

 lowed upon a thousand hills — a crowd of cones, all 

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