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are redolent still of freedom and poetry, and beauty and heroic war.

Byron was no great reader of Aristophanes, otherwise, as he drew towards Missolonghi, he might have been scared by the resemblance of its vicinity to the bogs and fens of Acheron. Mr Trelawny describes the spot with picturesque felicity. All around the city, he says, marshes, lagunes, and slime spread a belt of death. No language could be more correct. But Mr Trelawny was not with Byron when he took the fatal resolution of setting up his tabernacle on that pestilential spot. No one indeed was with him who could exercise the slightest influence over his movements; and it appears incontestably from Mr Trelawny's Recollections, as well as from many other sources, that the author of Childe Harold and Don Juan was not at that time in a state of mind which qualified him to take proper care of himself. Whatever may have been the causes that brought about such a result, he had reached that degree of exhaus-worthy to excite his envy? I asked Fletcher to bring tion in which men become sensible of the tediousness of life, and begin slowly to make up their minds to escape from it. Shelley was anxious to have always at hand a swift poison, to which he might have recourse when the condition of his mind should become unendurable. To this he evidently looked forward undoubtingly. He reckoned confidently upon its coming some day or another; and already at the age of twenty-nine became conscious, through various symptoms, of its approach. Byron cultivated the habit of sleeping always with the Bible and a pair of loaded pistols on a chair by his bedside.

These facts suggest very gloomy ideas, and at the same time force us into the conviction that a life of systematic excitement, whether literary or otherwise, is not good. The thinkers of old times, at all events, eschewed it as among the worst of evils. There was another thing, also, which they eschewed with still greater care-namely, the practice of living by opinion, of referring all your actions to the criterion set up by the world's estimate. They thought it best to judge for themselves, since if any one thing can be said to belong to a man more than another, it is his own happiness.

No one need be surprised to find that Byron, like all other men, had weaknesses; but it is surprising to make the discovery which has long ago been made, though Mr Trelawny supplies some fresh illustrations of it-that Byron was goaded almost to madness by dwelling perpetually on his club-feet.

It would be ridiculous affectation to pretend that there ever existed a man who would not have been vexed at being misshapen like Byron, but there have perhaps been few who would have taken it to heart as he did. By way of carrying on the contest with nature, which he commenced in an evil hour, he aimed throughout life at distinguishing himself by athletic exercises, which, on account of his deformity, caused him so much pain, suffering, and loss of animal spirits, that he may almost be said to have been a martyr to the cause of his own feet. So far did he carry this feeling that it was among the uppermost in his mind even in death. Mr Trelawny knew of the existence of this strange sensitiveness, but treated it with as little respect as Moore did his much nobler kind of sensitiveness-about the way in which his memory would be cherished by posterity. The one destroyed his impassioned pleading in his own behalf, thus defrauding equally the poet and the world; the other lifted the veil, or rather the shroud, from his corporeal imperfection, and made known what Byron's vanity took much greater pains to conceal than any flaw in his moral character.

On this point, however, we shall allow Mr Trelawny to speak for himself. He is peculiarly at home in whatever concerns dead bodies, and appears to enjoy

nothing so much as tearing off any delusions in which they might be enveloped. Arriving at Missolonghi a few days after Byron's death, he went to the house in which the body lay. No one,' he says, 'was in the house but Fletcher, of which I was glad. As if he knew my wishes, he led me up a narrow stair into a small room, with nothing in it but a coffin standing on trestles. No word was spoken by either of us; he withdrew the black pall and the white shroud, and there lay the embalmed body of the pilgrim-more beautiful in death than in life. The contraction of the muscles and skin had effaced every line that time or passion had ever traced on it; few marble busts could have matched its stainless white, the harmony of its proportions, and perfect finish; yet he had been dissatisfied with that body, and longed to cast its slough. How often I had heard him curse it! He was jealous of the genius of Shakspeare-that might well be; but where had he seen the face or form me a glass of water. On his leaving the room, to confirm or remove my doubts as to the cause of his lameness, I uncovered the pilgrim's feet, and was answered-the great mystery was solved. Both his feet were clubbed, and his legs withered to the knee the form and features of an Apollo, with the feet and legs of a silvan satyr.' This is exaggerated. Byron was neither so classically moulded nor so deformed-that is, no more like an Apollo than he was like Thersites. He was a good, handsome Englishman, with a face illumined by genius, full of emotion, and all the varying phenomena of intellect. When Fletcher returned, he drew the shroud and pall carefully over the feet of his master's corpse; he was very nervous, and trembled as he did so.

After carefully reading these Recollections, what is the impression left upon the mind? Is it favourable to any one? Do we rise from the perusal with a better idea of the writer, or of the individuals written about? This, however, it may be said, is not the point-the question ought to be, Is our conception of Byron or Shelley rendered truer or more complete? We think not. Some slight information may be gleaned about certain habits of both poets; but the general effect seems to be to unsettle and mystify the mind. The scenes over which the narrative carries us are often vividly depicted in parts, with off-hand dashes here and there; but even the Morea, with the frowning grandeur of its wild coast, fails to betray Mr Trelawny into drawing a regular picture. He passes through the most extraordinary places with the indifference of a muleteer; but his fancy wakes up now and then, and casts a startling and brilliant light upon some gray crag or lonely glen. It is much the same with his characters. A few of their points are shewn us, but in a manner too unconnected to render the exhibition of much use. The only value of such books is, that they may by chance awaken the curiosity of some readers, and induce them to seek for more satisfactory information than the writer himself supplies.

THE GUINEA-PIG S. WHEN 'term' begins in London, everybody, especially everybody who dwells within reasonable limits of the inns of court, is immediately made aware of it. There are a number of phenomenal indications which peep out of lone entries, start up in third-rate shop-windows, or cluster round wine-vaults in paved courts, or promenade the streets with lordly stride-all of which proclaim that interesting fact even to the most careless observer. Not only do the retired and mouldy retreats, where the lawyers affect to resort, pucker up their brows and wake out of their long sleepnot only does Pump Court once more resound with

the echoes of hasty feet, and Gray's, Lincoln's, and Clement's put on the aspect of bonâ-fide thoroughfares, with clients rushing in and out, and backwards and forwards all day long-but Chancery Lane, with all its fringe of flagged closes and bottomless alleys, Cook's Court and Carey Street, with their tons of brief-paper and red tape-the remotest purlieus of the Temple, and the loftiest garrets of the quilldriving hacks, are all galvanised into a state of sudden activity, which knows nor pause nor subsidence day or night.

Now it is that the costume of wigs, and gowns, and violet-coloured bags comes into fashion, and crops out suddenly in wonderful profusion in the region of Temple Bar. Now the white-aproned messengers are at their wits' end, and flurried with the harvest of sixpences which rain a silver shower, run hither and thither laden with missives verbal and written, and only too happy if they escape the perpetration of some fatal exchange in the delivery. Now is Mrs Jones, the laundress, plagued out of her life with the everlasting tintinnabulation of twenty bells at once, and reduced to the necessity of administering impartial justice by answering none of them. Now is little Twister, the barber of Poppin's Corner, who has just achieved his first professional wig, praying devoutly that his patron, Mr Augustus Grinder, who ate his way to the bar with such exemplary fervour, may get his virgin brief, in which case he has pledged himself to purchase Twister's virgin wig. Now are the law-stationers up to their eyes in business, or buried in it over head and ears; now do all the hangers-on who yield to a magnetic attraction in the fiat of judge and jury, crowd to the judicial arena; and now does the Guinea-pig, starting from his sleep, make his appearance on the field of action, and address himself to the mission of his existence.

'And, pray, who is the guinea-pig?'

The guinea-pig, my friend, is not the animal mentioned under that name by Buffon, neither did Goldsmith put him down in his Animated Nature, though the observant and genial Goldy, it is more than probable, knew the species well enough. Who is the guinea-pig, do you ask? Favour us with your company for a few moments, and we will discover for you this choice specimen of natural history.

Here we are, then, at Westminster Hall. That door to the left, flanked by that branching maypole rigged with blind gas-burners, is the members' entrance to the House of Commons; and this one opposite, to the right, is the entrance to the Court of Queen's Bench. In the lobby within sits an old woman dispensing apples and oranges, to exhausted witnesses and feverish clients, at a penny apiece; and in the lofty square apartment which serves as the court beyond, Lord Campbell is sitting at this moment dispensing justice at not quite so cheap a rate. His lordship, as you see, has a couple of brother-judges with him on the elevated dais, and all three look mightily grand in their huge longtailed wigs, resting like epaulets on their shoulders, their crimson robes of office and their broad ermine trimmings. The court is crowded in every part, and very still-not a sound is heard but the deep double bass of Counsellor Bulbous, who has been on his legs this hour, and is likely to buzz on for two hours longer-being engaged on the famous suit of Slinker versus Slime, touching the repairs of Mudbury Dyke. The buzz-uzz-oozle-woozle-snuffle of the worthy counsellor, like the song of the bluebottle after dinner on a summer's afternoon, has produced a soporific influence traceable on the whole two hundred or so of auditors who represent the British public. There he stands in that oblong pit below the dais, which, dotted as it is in every part with round white wigs all motionless, looks

uncommonly like an oblong bed of cauliflowers planted in rows and in full blow. There he bubbles forth his interminable plea-the judges resigning themselves to fate in their easy-chairs, with a patience and fortitude only to be accounted for by reference to those quarterly thousands paid out of Her Majesty's exchequer, which compensate the weariness of office. His learned brethren doze on their benches-the newspaper reporters doze in their boxes-the casual spectators who have crept in to slake their curiosity, find themselves yawning before they know what they are about, and sneak out again for a refresher in the open air. Numbers, you remark, come in to see and hear; some take their seats on the rising benches open to the public, some merely lounge against the wall-but very few of them stand it, or sit it, many minutes before they are off again out of reach of that somnolent voice.

'Not so,' say you; 'there are some forty or fifty people on those upper benches, who, so far from moving, seem to be regular fixtures, and never move at all.'

Ah, my friend, those are the guinea-pigs-those are the identical natural curiosities we have come in search of, and you cannot do better than to note them well. During the whole of the period of term those upper benches are the habitat of the judicial guinea-pig. Mark how still, stolid, and statue-like they sit, how persistently they do not listen to anything that goes forward, and how thoroughly they ignore each other. Gregarious as these strange creatures are, it is an unquestionable fact that they are never known to fraternise in the slightest degree. Indeed, it is rumoured that they hate one another like grim death, and that the greatest windfall that could happen to any one of them would be to see a dozen or two of his comrades knocked on the head. An ill-natured story is current, to the effect that when that old gentleman yonder in the corner-he with the frayed black stock and iron-moulded linen-was seized with a fit of paralysis, and fell to the ground, not one of them could be got to move a finger in his aid, and the police had to bestir themselves to get him out; and that when he came back on the following term, all the welcome he met with was a growl of disappointment that the attack had not carried him off. You will observe that they are all distinguished by two things-a peculiar seediness of raiment which makes convulsive efforts to assume respectability, and a still more peculiar cast of countenance, which it is far easier to recognise when once seen than it is to describe with accuracy.

Those ranks of silent, self-concentered statues, then, are the guinea-pigs; and if you ask what they are doing there, the answer is-they are waiting for their guinea. Whenever the court sits-no matter whether at Westminster or at the Guildhall-the guinea-pigs sit along with it-and they will inevitably make their appearance with all the regularity and far greater punctuality than either judge or advocate. For their description, we can give it only in part, for there is a mystery about them which the keenest observer has not been able to penetrate entirely, and of all bipeds they are reckoned the most close and taciturn, almost equalling in these qualities their four-footed and tailless prototypes. They are, however

for so they must be to qualify them for the post they seek to adorn-housekeepers and rate-payers; they have contrived, by some means, to get their names enrolled on the list of jurymen to the Queen's Bench Court, and to keep them there; and the grand business, the only business of their lives during the continuance of term, is to shift themselves, by hook or by crook, by urgent solicitation in the right quarter, or by patient waiting, into the jury-box, in order that they may be entitled to the guinea with

which the liberality of the court will reward their— labour, we were going to say, but that term would be a misnomer-their inertia.

But what is that? As sure as fate, Bulbous has come to a dead-lock: his lordship, whom we all supposed to be dozing, has pulled him up on a point of law, and the interminable plea has come to an unexpected halt. Lo! the cauliflowers resolve themselves into a committee of legal gentlemen-half the wigs turn their facial side this way--the white heads are all bobbing and whispering together-there is the hasty scratching of quills upon foolscap-and while Counsellor Bulbous is vigorously ramming documents into his bag, with the air of a check-mated chess-player, the jury-box is suddenly vacated, and the deputy clerk of the court begins bawling over the names of the list of jurymen, in order to swear in a new jury for the immediate trial of a new cause.

Look at the guinea-pigs now-they are no longer the still, stolid, unimpressible creatures you took them for. See how every man of them bristles uphow the eyes twinkle, and the lips part, and the neck cranes forward in the attitude of attention, as name after name is called.

'John Brown!' bawls the clerk. 'Here!' and John Brown, buttoning his seedy overcoat, pulling up his collar, and unearthing from his threadbare cuffs a clean pair of wristbands, rises with a selfsatisfied smirk, and glides into the jury-box as silently as the guinea, by and by, will glide into his pocket.

"Thomas Robinson!' 'Here!' and Robinson, with an air of dignified complacency, follows in the wake of Brown.

'James Jones!' bawls the clerk. There is a dead silence-no answering 'Here!' and in a few moments the clerk shouts James Jones!' second time with

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redoubled emphasis. Still there is no reply; James Jones is evidently not forthcoming, though the pause is prolonged before the third time of asking. The third appeal produces the same non-result as to Mr James Jones; but now a little man who has been wriggling on his seat and fussily rising and sitting down again for the last few minutes, breaks the

silence.

Cornelius Jones is here,' he calls out suggestively

to the clerk.

This unwarrantable interpolation on the part of Mr Cornelius acts like a firebrand among the whole herd of guinea-pigs; and in defiance of the sanctity of the place, their resentment bursts forth in a series of grunts and sneers and bitter objurgations launched at the head of the offender with a fierceness all the more fierce that it has to be uttered sub voce and out of ear-shot of the bench.

'It won't do, Corny,' growls one.

'Wait your turn, snatchbody!' hisses a second. 'Betsy Prig!' snarls a third.

And furious eyes are turned on the delinquent, who, being accustomed to that sort of fire, does not wince under it, but preserves an enviable equanimity until the storm has blown over.

By the time the whole twenty-four jurymen are collected, the ranks of the guinea-pigs are considerably thinned. There is an evident expression of disappointment in some of the remaining faces, but that is tempered with some satisfaction too, because, though they have not yet won their prospective prize, they are nearer to the winning-post by four-andtwenty names, and feel that they are at no great distance from the inevitable one pound one.

But the question, Who is the guinea-pig?' is not answered yet, and, in truth, it is not one of easy solution. There are various theories afloat touching the physiology of the creature. Speculators on this abstruse subject have likened his tribe to a shower of

frogs, coming no man knows whence, and departing no man knows whither or to those curious travellers the land-crabs of the West Indies, which overrun certain territories at certain seasons, and then suddenly and miraculously vanish away. What is agreed upon on all hands appears to be the fact, that the guinea-pig is altogether an undiscoverable biped at all or any of those seasons when the law-courts are not sitting. Where he spends his long vacation, nobody seems to have even the remotest idea. The wildest conjectures are hazarded as to his modes and means of life. It is computed that at the utmost he cannot realise more than from fifteen to twenty guineas a year by hanging on to the skirts of the judges: how, then, does he get the rest of the income which constitutes him a housekeeper and a rate-payer, and a 'good man and true?'

We can hazard no reply to this question. We have heard the satirical wits of the court taunt this fraternity with questions of various kinds-as to the condition of a hypothetic mangle, for instance, or the real ownership of a paletot suspiciously glossy; but these sarcasms point to nothing definite, and leave the real question in all its uncertainty. According to all appearances, the mission of the guinea-pig is to compass as often as he can an easy guineaand beyond that we can declare nothing positive concerning him.

CRAG FAST.

We have lived so long, my brother Frank and I, in the grand hill-country of the north, that its great gray giants have long ceased to be held by us in awe; our reverence for them is not one whit diminished, but our fear is fled. Their crowns, hidden in cloud, their huge fern-covered shoulders, their mighty girdles of melancholy pine, are our glory still, but are no more threatening than their slopes of pasture-land, and woods that stray down to the margin of the lakes. Even in winter-time, unless the hill-fog be hanging thickly, or the blinding snow be whirling, we should not hesitate to cross the highest gap in Westmoreland, nearest mountain-top we can see the road to it, and or find our way to Keswick by the Fells. From our track it almost all the way, bridging the rivers and fording the rills, and winding round mere after mere, until, a thin white streak, it climbs the furthest ridge, and comes, we know, unawares on the little town. As the crow flies, we are not ten miles from it; but a man cannot reach it in eighteen miles, nor a horse in twenty-eight. Many a time, since Harry left us, have Frank and I gone thither and returned in the same day, partly to get little luxuries that are not in our far-away mountain home; partly from the exceeding beauty of the way itself; and partly, it may be, to keep his memory green who is no longer with us.

A score of summers have brought bird and butterfly into our happy valley, and set the bee roaming on the hills since last our Harry took that walk with us--but we do not forget it. The fair June morn, the quarter which the gentle breeze blew from, the coombs wherein the shadows of the clouds lay-we remember all. Harry was beautiful, which we are far from being, kind and accomplished almost as a girl; but he was weak in health, and had to battle for dear life through every winter. Supple of limb when well, and strong in spirit whether well or ill, he wanted care, and we were not good nurses. We did not lack in love, but in the reason firm, the temperate will,' which have been so often found of late in the gentler sex, soothing, controlling, saving so many of their soldier brethren. What our poor brother fixed

therefore in store for him. On we went, mile after mile, over the dry morasses, where the streams no longer pushed their sluggish way through the black mould,

often under some huge crag, from which the goat fled, scared, or the rock-raven slowly oared herself away on mighty lustrous wings-for the heat had become intense--to rest. Panting on the short brown grass, with our faces heavenward, was as good as lotuseating; the warmth of noon and the quiet of night reigned jointly upon these lofty heights, where the murmur of the bee alone seemed to thread the silence. Here we passed strange-shaped crags, which once, the legend went, were mortal men tranced by wizard spell; here, rock-rent chasms, where the fiend was said to dwell in winter-time; and here we came upon some desolate tarn, needing not romance to heighten its lonely terrors-where Solitude seemed sister to Despair. Meanwhile, the faint air had no breath save that which came in fitful feverish gasps, and died away; the blue sky became islanded above us by a huge black cloud, and our thirst grew insupportable. After a rest somewhat longer than usual, we caught the glimmer of a falling stream, some half-mile off, but separated from us by uneven and rugged ground. And 'Who drinks first?' exclaimed Harry; and 'I,' and I,' we answered, and each took his own way with a cheer, and started at racing speed for the welcome gill.

his wishes on, we had no heart to refuse. He was, we felt, and everybody but himself knew well, but for a little while on earth, and not, therefore, to be denied a pleasure lightly. He would walk to Keswick-and the tufts of heath were withering. We lay down that he had determined on-the next time Fred and Frank went, and designing there to sleep that night, we suffered him one day to go with us. We chose our time during a series of unbroken fine weather; no rain had fallen for weeks throughout the district -'fair' said the shepherd's weather-glass, and 'fair' said Michael Gwain, the shepherd, when we started that morning, we two with knapsacks, and Harry with his alpenstock, up the bed of the empty beck. It had been rifled of its silver treasure by the sun, and the crags stood out bare and smooth where the waters had roamed at will. Silence had usurped the seat of song; and the stones that had held their summits highest above the strife, like many a human head that proudly lifts itself above the battle of the world, displayed their stubborn breasts, riven and worn enough. Two deep-cut channels alone marked the spot where the twin torrents had lately met; and a little tree that overhung it, and was wont to be kept green by the rainbow-tinted spray, was dying fast; the mighty stepping-stones, fit each to cover a hero's grave, were useless, and felt no footsteps. It was dry even beneath the little bridge where the trout were used to make their ceaseless circles in the pool; the dead fish were lying on either side in their beautiful armour, never more to slumber in the brown depths, or to wag a lazy fin upon the surface; they had trusted to have escaped the evil eye of the sun. One by one, the sheep wandered up and down with piteous bleat, and we ourselves, with head inclined and hollowed hand, could find no drop of water.

Our progress up the broken way was slow, and on the steep path beside it the parching earth was hot beneath our feet; and the fern, the moss-knots, and the heather, crumbled into dust within our grasp. One of us has reached the summit; that shout of triumph carried over the hills about proclaims it, and that one is Harry; because he had less breath to lose than any of us, he must of course needs scramble up the first, and hollo. And indeed there is something glorifying in having gained the top of a high hill; when the breeze of the mountain first blows on a man's brow, one may generally know it by other signs than a mere ruddy cheek; the voice is more still than usual, but what beauty or wisdom it has to speak we seem to get there above all places; the freshness that falls on the senses sheds dew on the heart, and the thoughts that lie deepest spring up and blossom into speech; the world's cares and crosses seem all left below, and fade away far in the distance, while beneath us is spread the glory of the earth. When to us the town lies in silence, and the sail turns not on the hill-when the spade, the pick, and the clanging factory send up no murmur-when the glancing river moves not on, and the oar of the sailor is dumb, and thronged city and desolate sea alike give forth no sound: from the Isle of Man in the far westward, and along the open sparkling sea, our eyes came back to the dear valley at our feet, the tranquil lake with its green-wooded islets, wherein another heaven seemed to smile, another sun to shine; the rich low meadows round it sprinkled thickly with cattle, the farms of dazzling whiteness, the low-roofed cottages of unmortared stone, and the vane of the gray old church beaming above the slumbrous yews like fire. All men may not be moved so, but I think it is thus with most of us who think; and it was so certainly on that day with our dear Harry: never was he so animated, enthusiastic, eloquent as then; we might have almost known, had we been long enough in the old north country to imbibe its creeds, that mischief was

By this time the last wandering cloud had joined the threatening mass that hung swollen and dark above us, like an impersonation of wrath; and one instant the sunlight gleamed over the landscape, and the next, the shadow overcast it, as fever flushes a sick man's brow. Mountain-top could not be discerned from cloud, and the blackness of night was gathering, when on a sudden the heaven burst into flame, and the earth glared and reddened to meet it. The pent-up thunder broke forth at the same instant, and rolled out again and again before the first echoes had died away upon the hills. A few big drops fell on my forehead, and then a living wall of rain moved swiftly against me. It fairly beat my breath out, and I could hardly raise my eyes to see the glory of the tempest, the sheet after sheet of lightning which seemed to wrap the dead earth round, while the thunder hymned its terrible requiem.

Faint, weary, and wet as I was, a great joy seemed to depart when the storm ceased, which it did almost at once. Never had I seen Dame Nature in a more awful mood; scarce ever, too, under a more lovely aspect than when the sun smote through the cloud-rack, throwing broad veils of silver over the green hillsides, and setting great crowns of pearls upon their heads; intertwining the hair of the pine-woods with strings of diamonds, and awakening a thousand becks which ran straight to the valleys in song. Frank was already at the goal, and welcomed me with shouts of triumph. He had taken across the marsh as I had done, but by a securer track. Harry, who had chosen the outer edge of the tableland, along the cliffs, had not yet come. We waited for some time impatiently, for the afternoon was by this time far advanced; and when we went back to seek for him, it was with beating hearts. Neither whispered to the other his secret fear; but we read it plainly enough in each other's eyes. What if that glad laugh-music should be never heard again? if those noble eyes should be glazed in death, and the beautiful face be marred by those cruel cliffs? and with the thought arose the look of his fond mother in the hour when we should bring her lifeless darling home! Not till we had peered down every cliff and gill, and searched over the treacherous bog in vain, did Frank, with a face I shall never quite forget, approach the verge of the precipice. If our Harry had fallen there,

indeed all hope was over. But no; thank God, there was no terrible thing in that green valley-no one dread spot, such as I once have seen, whereon the eye is riveted at once-a knot of clothes, with the evil birds clanging around it. We took the same perilous path which the lost boy had taken, where the height above and the depth below were a burden to our brain, and presently we found the narrow footway broken down before us. It must have been a daring foot that would trust itself to leap to the other side, and but a slight form whose weight could have there alighted in safety. A few feet further on, the goattrack-for it was nothing more-was resumed, and rounded, out of our sight, an enormous rock. Frank was foremost, and leaped the chasm without an instant's thought. No courage, no self-sacrifice, could have induced any man to do so who had hesitated for a moment. The ground gave way with him, and he fell his whole length down, still clinging by his hands, however, to the firmer part. Agile and wary as a panther, he had done his best to guard against this danger by coming down on all-fours. I hid my eyes in terror as he clung spasmodically for a few seconds, and collected all his strength for a spring upwards; and when I looked again, he was in comparative safety. There was an impassable barrier of some eighteen feet of sheer precipice between him and me; he rounded the point before him, and a cry of gladness assured me that he had at least found Harry alive. I clambered back again with difficulty, to see whether I could get down to them from above, but it was not to be attempted. The great rock jutted out right over them, and there was no pathway round it from the other side at all. Whether the track had ever been continued further, I could not tell, but it now led clearly into a complete cul de sac, from which there was no escape unless by wings.

To be starved to death, or to be dashed down the steep by the first wind, seemed to be the inevitable fate of my poor brothers. Frank's voice came up from the abyss, and somewhat calmed me. 'Harry has fainted with terror,' he said; 'I have no doubt his head failed him at this spot. We cannot round the rock again from hence, but there is room enough to stand, and even to sit here, for both of us. Do you, Fred, go down to Borrowdale at once, before it gets dark, and bring up with you at daylight half-a- | dozen strong men, and all the sheep-ropes you can get together; and pray Heaven send us a calm night, and that our Harry may be yet preserved to us.'

With a heart-felt injunction to the brave fellow to be of good courage, and to rely on me, I started on my errand of life and death. A frantic anxiety urged me to fly like the wind, and the most dangerous paths seemed to have lost all their terrors; but one false step, or even a slip to sprain an ankle, would be, I knew, destruction to those dear ones on the steep; so I chose my way with caution, and did not reach the valley till dusk. The greatest eagerness and sympathy were at once manifested; we collected plenty of the great cables used to extricate the crag-fast sheep, and came up with the earliest streaks of light in a great company. We could see the rock plainly enough from Borrowdale, but not the two figures crouching under it; no heath-flower bloomed above it, nor bush nor tree over its stern seamed visage, and its wrinkled brows seemed to overhang the height with a consciousness of cruel power. It was not so easy, however, to find it from above; and having omitted to leave a man below to direct us, we wasted some precious minutes. At last we came upon the spot, and heard brother Frank cry out to us in a sad voice: 'He is alive, for he still breathes; but that is all.'

The dreadful hours passed in company with his poor charge had evidently shaken even his fortitude.

It was arranged that many smaller ropes should be taken down with the rescuer, in case they needed both to be secured to the cables. We twisted three of these last, for greater security, into one. No one opposed my natural entreaty to be permitted to be lowered first; but I saw the shepherds shaking their heads, as if they doubted my being of much service. Ten or a dozen attached themselves to the end of the tether, and I was fastened to the other, in a loop, which formed a sort of seat. A long staff was given me to keep myself off the face of the precipice, and then they let me drop downward. Lower and lower, and out of their sight, I sank slowly, but not without much motion. It required all my attention to prevent dashing against the crags: if I pushed off gently, I hit them again at once; if I gave a bold thrust, I was turned round, and flung upon them backwards. Presently, I sank below the level of the rock under which my brothers lay, and saw them. Harry was resting in the other's lap, with a corpse-like face, and quite motionless, as one to whom no hurt could happen more, and whom no power could save. Frank kept his eyes toward the stone and away from the dizzy height, and he did but glance at me for an instant, and then resumed his position.

'Get back, Frederick; get back, for the love of Heaven. Let the best shepherd amongst them take your place; and even then, I fear we two shall never see home again.' And indeed it required far more skill than I could boast of to get such a momentum as might carry me into the crevice, and still less could I have snatched a hold that might have sustained me there. I gave the signal to haul up, and told the men how matters stood.

'Was Mr Frank sufficiently master of himself, and safely situated, to draw a man in by one of the lesser ropes, if such could be thrown to him?' they asked. I answered 'No,' and it seemed greatly to disconcert them. The lightest and most agile of the party, however, volunteered to do his best, and over he went, as I had done. He required much more rope this time, in order to get a sufficient swing on it for his purpose; and those who were not engaged in holding fast could see him strike out and return to the face of the cliff quite clearly. After one or two tremendous strains, the rope suddenly slackened, and we knew that he had found foothold somewhere underneath. I don't pretend to say how it was done, for it seems to me to this day to have been a miracle of mercy: I only know that the next haul of ours brought up the shepherd with Harry, yet alive, within his arms; and again, that the fine fellow was let down, and came up with my good, brave Frank in safety. He was not much less changed to look at than his charge. Anxiety and despair had done, it seemed, the work of years with him; and we had to carry the one, and lead the other's uncertain footsteps home.

Weeks passed away before the strong man grew himself again; and for the delicate boy, a sick-room was his prison for months. The exposure to the night-air after the pelting storm, had overtasked his lungs, and his sleep was long disturbed by what he had suffered; his thin white fingers would clutch at empty air, in dreams, and his brows grow damp at the imaginary abyss that seemed to yawn beneath him. The events of that awful time indeed, haunted his memory by day and night to the last; but he never recalled them without the deepest thankfulness. 'I die amongst you all,' he said, 'safe-safe, dear Frank, at home.' And he left us before the winter came, when all beautiful things were decaying and about to perish likewise. For us, although we yield to none, by this time, in tracking the wild fox to his lair, and the raven to her lofty nest, we never pass that rock upon the Fells without some awe;

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