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Our captain commands, we with pleasure obey,
And the dawning of morn only calls us away.
On our sleep-sealed eyes

Soon soft visions arise,

From the black fleet of sorrow we fear no surprise,
For the sons of Winander are joyous and brave,
As bold as the storm, and as free as the wave.

Whene'er we pass o'er, without compass, the line,
'Tis friendship that blows on an ocean of wine;
The breakers of discord ne'er roar on the lee,
At the rudder whilst love, wine, and friendship agree:
Then let us combine

Love, friendship, and wine,

On our bark then the bright star of pleasure shall shine;
For the sons of Winander are faithful and brave,

And proud rides their flag on the Westmoreland wave.

And now "sharpening its mooned horns," the whole Fleet close inshore drops anchor; and all the crews give Christopher three cheers. If this be not a regatta, pray what is a regatta? Colonsay paws the beach as if impatient to board the FlagShip like a horse-marine. The Shuffler draws up in style on our right flank-"Steady, Sam! Steady!" Billy applies a red-hot poker to the touch-hole of the pattareroe-and in full view of the Fleet-AGAIN WE START.

CHRISTOPHER ON COLONSAY,

FYTTE II.

[JULY 1834. J

THE sharp quadruplications of Colonsay's incomparable hoofs tooling along the crown of the road, clattered from the cliffs among the echoes of the pattareroe, while the Shuffler, studious of the turf, pitched out in high style, noiseless as a deer on the heather-and thus neck and neck at the rate of sixteen miles an hour, we wheeled round Lowood Bay, leaving behind us the Regatta like a dream. Yet fragments of the vision seemed to float on along with us, lustrous at intervals through openings among the trees, and with our pride of horsemanship was blended a sense of beauty in the fleeting groves. Fields with pasturing and ruminating cattle seemed swimming away southward, and idle horses neighed to us over hedges, and in an instant were gone. We saw Sammy by our side as if we saw him not; for our eyes-with our whole heart, soul, and mind concentrated in the dilated orbs-were now fixed between those long ears, laid back like those of a hare before greyhounds up a hill, and we became a Trot. Oh! that the universe could have beheld us! Such was the vainglorious wish of one then imagining himself more than immortal— when, without one preparatory motion indicative of his purpose, off at right angles flew Colonsay, in ultra-gallop up the formidable avenue to Dove's Nest, shaving a jaunting-car full of parasolled people on their way down to the low country -and then quiet on the flat before that domicile as an expired whirlwind. There he stood smelling the turf, but not grazing -licking the moist herbage with his foot-long tongue! Our presence of mind and decision of character had even in those days become proverbial, and we ordered a wondering lad, who came to the barn-door with his strawy hair on end, instantly

to bring a pail of meal-and-water. We sympathised with our noble steed-for we knew by experience how intolerable is extreme thirst. Up to his eyes in the pail, what power of suction he displayed! The mealy surface of the delicious draught descended in rapid ebb; and then upsetting the tub —for it was a tub-playfully with his snorting nose- he put about quick as the Liverpoolian herself on the liquid element -and down that almost perpendicular approach-or rather reproach to the vanished House-he re-flew-as if the devil had been chasing him-which perhaps he was-and we heard and felt by the crashing that we were now driving our way through a wood. Facilis descensus Averni! we inly breathed. For missing that sharpest of all turns, he had forsaken the avenue, and, demented, was taking a short cut to the highroad. But though a short cut, it was a severe one; for we knew the ground well, having traversed it often in the season of woodcocks, and to effect a footing on the turnpike, it was necessary to leap over an old lime-kiln, from the level thereof, somewhere about twenty feet high! Colonsay knew nothing of the danger, till he was within a few yards of the brink; and had his heart failed him, we should have been mummies. But with a suppressed shriek he took it—while a Quaker with his wife and family from Kendal, in a one-horse gig, beheld overhead in the air a Flying Dragon. Oh! the stun! The soles

of our feet felt driven up into the crown of our head, while we saw nothing but repeated flashes of lightning-and then what mortal sickness! Staggering and shivering like a new-dropt foal was poor Colonsay now, hardly able to sustain our weightand our belief is that both of us must have swooned. On recovering some of our senses, sorely perplexed were we to make out the meaning of that enormous brim-that measureless breadth of beaver that seemed to canopy us like a dingy sky. Slowly it grew into the hat-head-and face of the most benevolent of brethren-for Isaac Braithwaite was fanning us with his George Fox; and his two lovely daughters, calm in their compassion-demure even in their despair-were standing beside him; while Agatha, sweetest sister of charity, was upholding in her lily hand a horn-cup of cordial, which, soon as it touched our lips, diffused through our being a restoration that reached the very core of our heart. "Friend Christopher, thou art pale! how feelest thou?" said a sweet low voice.

No

"Not paler than thy hand, thou ministering angel." smile met our reply-and verily it was a vain one-for her ear was unacquainted with compliments, and familiar at all times with the language and the tones of truth. No questions were asked whence we came, though to them it must have been a mystery, nor why in such fashion; but on our faintly murmuring that we were engaged in a trotting match, the family looked at one another, and we understood the piteous expression of their eyes. "I fear thou art feverish, Christopher, and thou hadst better take thy place in our vehicle," said Isaac; but our recovery had been almost as rapid as our decline and fall-we were conscious of the return of the roses to our cheeks-Colonsay was again firm on his feet—and we promised to join our friends at some refreshment in the inn at Grasmere. Our hat had been left on some tree in the wood, and the cloudless sun, now advanced in heaven, smote our aching temples. The family pitied our plight, and Isaac, the good Samaritan, without saying a word, put his beaver on our head; and at that moment, Colonsay, fresh as a two-year-old, shot forwards, casting up a not unamused eye on his master, metamorphosed into a Broadbrim, and presenting the appearance of an at once venerable and dashing Quaker.

No symptom of Shuffler-but gathering the shore, lo, the Barge! We were now racing the NIL TIMEO-" with all her crew complete." How beautifully regular to time the level flashes of the magnificent Ten-oared! Billy-star of steersmen-lying in the stern-sheets-and at every long pull, strong pull, and pull altogether, bending forwards, and retracting his body-to give "Old Nell" an impulse; but the Green Girl of Windermere heeded it not, and beautifully bore along with her all her shadowy pomp, burnishing the bays, and kindling up with her far-felt beauty all the broad bosom of the lake. There sat the Stewartsons, and the Robinsons, and the Dixons, and the Longs, a strong and skilful brotherhood, that would have pulled victoriously against any admiral's gig in the sarvice had the race been even three leagues out and in, with a stormy sea. But now all was calm as bright—and soon subsided the troubled beauty in her wake-leaving no visible pathway on the diamond deep. From her stern towered a living Thistle-for Westmoreland in those days was part of Scotland-and " NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSET" was the sentiment

peacefully breathed from every prickly flower resplendent on a Plant, that in its stateliness deserved to be called a Tree.

But what crowd of cattle is this? A drove of kyloes! If you try to count them, it must be not by scores, but hundreds. Their lowing announces their country—and even from such lips how pleasant to our ears the Scottish accent! They are all Highlanders-every mother's son of them-and are routing Gaelic. Black the ground of the living mass, spotted and interlaced with brown-and what a forest of horns! We thought for a moment of a thousand red-deer once seen by us suddenly at sunrise rousing themselves among the shadows of Ben-y-Gloe! A majority of the kyloes were standing-but a more than respectable, a formidable minority, were lying on the road-and from their imperturbable countenances it was manifest that the farthest idea in this world from their minds was that of rising up-many chewing the cud. Like Wellington in the centre of a solid square at Waterloo-though that coming event had not then cast its shadow before—sat Sammy Sitwell on Shuffler. It was impossible that he could have wedged himself into the position he now occupied-and we saw that he had been gradually surrounded—till he now shone conspicuous as the Generalissimo of the Drove.

"Got pless your honour-Got pless your Grace," ejaculated three stalwart Celts, brown on the face as gypsies, but with bold blue eyes, suddenly illumined with the poetry and the patriotism of the heather hills; and who were they but Angus of Glen-Etive and his twins! Last time we shook hands with them 'twas on the bridge-a single tree-a pine-across that chasm, up whose cataract the salmon, like a bent bow, essays to leap in vain, though fresh from Connal's roaring eddies, and strong with the spirit of the sea. "A ponny loch, your honour-a ponny loch-but what's it tae the Yetive, your honour-and what's thae hillocks tae the Black Mount, your honour? But you'll no refuse tastin a drop o' the unchristened cretur-sma' still-oh, but yon's a prime worm !" And unbuckling a secret belt round his waist, he handed it up to us, nor were we slow to apply the mouth of the serpent to that of the dragon.

“And all did say, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,

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