CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



his side in the social hour on a knoll in the open 

 sunshine, and the whole school were in ecstasies to 

 hear tales and stories from his genius, even like a 

 flock of birds chirping in their joy all newly-alighted 

 in a vernal land. In spite of that difference in our 

 years — or oh! say rather because that very difference 

 did touch the one heart with tenderness and the 

 other with reverence, how often did we two wander, 

 like elder and younger brother, in the sunlight and 

 the moonlight solitudes! Woods — into whose inmost 

 recesses we should have quaked alone to penetrate, 

 in his company were glad as gardens, through their 

 most awful umbrage; and there was beauty in the 

 shadows of the old oaks. Cataracts — in whose lone- 

 some thunder, as it pealed into those pitchy pools, 

 we durst not by ourselves have faced the spiay — in 

 his presence, dinn'd with a merry music in the des- 

 ert, and cheerful was the thin mist they cast sparkling 

 up into the air. Too severe for our uncompanioned 

 spirit, then easily overcome with awe, was the soli- 

 tude of those remote inland lochs. But as we walked 

 with him along the winding shores, how passing sweet 

 the calm of both blue depths — how magnificent the 

 white-crested waves tumbling beneath the black thun- 

 der-cloud! More beautiful, because our eyes gazed on 

 it along with his, at the beginning or the ending of 

 some sudden storm, the Apparition of the Rainbow! 

 [117] 



