CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



some forgotten tarns, or counting twice over some 

 one of our more darling waters, worthy to dash their 

 waves against the sides of ships — alone wanting to 

 the magnificence of those inland seas! Yes — it was as 

 level, as boggy, as hilly, as mountainous, as woody, 

 as lochy, and as rivery a parish, as ever laughed to 

 scorn Colonel Mudge and his Trigonometrical Survey. 

 Was not that a noble parish for apprenticeship in 

 sports and pastimes of a great master? No need of 

 any teacher. On the wings of joy we were borne over 

 the bosom of nature, and learnt all things worthy 

 and needful to be learned, by instinct first, and after- 

 wards by reason. To look at a wild creature — winged 

 with feathers, or mere feet — and not desire to de- 

 stroy or capture it — is impossible to passion — to im- 

 agination — to fancy. Thus had we longed to feel and 

 handle the glossy plumage of the beaked birds — the 

 wide-winged Birds of Prey — before our finger had 

 ever touched a trigger. Their various flight, in vari- 

 ous weather, we had watched and noted with some- 

 thing even of the eye of a naturalist — the wonder of 

 a poet; for among the brood of boys there are hun- 

 dreds and thousands of poets who never see manhood, 

 — the poetry dying away — the boy growing up into 

 mere prose; — yet to some even of the paragraphs of 

 these Three Fyttes do we appeal, that a few sparks 

 of the sacred light are yet alive within us; and sad 

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