took to cobs. In the field AUT CESAR AUT NULLUS had been our motto-and when no more able to ride up to it, in a wise spirit we were contented with the high-ways and by-waysand Flying Kit, ere he had passed his grand climacteric-sic transit gloria mundi-became celebrated for his jog-trot.

Thus for many years we purchased nothing above fourteen hands and an inch--and that of course became the standard of the universal horse-flesh in the country-nobody dreaming of riding the high horse in the neighbourhood of Christopher North. If at any time anything was sent to us by a friend above that mark, it was understood the gift might be returned without offence-though, to spare the giver mortification, we used to ride the animal for a few days, that the circumstance might be mentioned when he was sent to market; nor need we say that a word in our hand-writing to that effect entitled the laying on of ten pounds in the twenty on his price. We had an innate inclination towards iron-greys-on that was engrafted an acquired taste for hog-manes—and on that again was superinduced a desire for crop-ears-till ere long all these qualifications were esteemed essential to the character of a roadster, and within a circle of a hundred miles you met with none but iron-grey, hog-maned, crop-eared, fourteen-hand-andan-inch cobs-even in carts, shandrydans, gigs, post-chaises, and coaches-nay, the mail.

But though our usual pace was the jog-trot, think not that we did not occasionally employ the trot par excellence-and eke the walk. No cob would have been suffered standing-room for a single day in our six-stalled stable who could not walk five miles an hour, and trot fourteen; and 'twas a spectacle good for sore eyes, all the six slap-banging it at that rate, while a sheet might have covered them, each bowled along by his own light lad, by way of air and exercise, when the road was dusty a rattling whirlwind that startled the birds in the green summer-woods. For almost all the low roads in our county were sylvan-those along the mountains treeless altogether, and shaded here and there by superincumbent cliffs.

At the first big drop of blue-ruin from a thunder-cloud-so well had they all come to know their master's ailment, that it mattered not which of the six he bestrode-our friend below us, laying back the stools of his ears, and putting out his nose with a shake of his head, while his hog-mane bristled electric

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industry. The mechanic v
and in whose ear an aviciesse du
Loughfare rings hourly, hangs from 11
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bough, that should mix in ae mumur
and consoles the perpetual use of the
us Burns sings more especially

entirely shares; but he sings a preus
walk in other and less pleasant vy
knowledge, without stint, ir iz ures
never forget, that the mind

it draws nourishment from thongna. such as lay reviving dews on the tr oded the more by him to whom they un the face of nature. This virtue of esse trains to penetrate and permeate traditions + from those in which they had her rea r we follow them. In the mine. n the , in remote lands under fer his countrymen. Fun d lives there: and his ele and upon the hears of he of fortune or ambitions an I shores. Carepining and m haunting recollection of beari earest poetry, not with Erzesie home-invigorated hopes that the eyes shall have their are, and greensward and the heather-best of but one scal in this our great National All the titudes that from morning towards did Ayr, till at mid-day they ty mass in front of Burns's Moment, wds from cordless villages and towns, and from the great City of the West, the so dweting all round the breezy in regions that stretch away to the

in the gloomy light, in ten yards was at the top of his speed, up-hill down-dale-without regard to turnpikes, all paid for at so much per annum-while children ceased their play before cottage-doors, and boys on schoolhouse greens clapped their hands, and waved their caps, to the thrice-repeated cry of "There he goes! Hurra for old Christopher North." For even then we had an old look-it was so gash-though hovering but on three-score-and our hair, it too was of the irongrey-" but more through toil than age"-nothing grizzling the knowledge-box so surely, though slowly, as the ceaseless clink-clank of that mysterious machinery-with its wheels within wheels-instinct with spirit-the Brain.

Oh! if it would but lie still-for one day in the seven-in Sabbath rest! Then too might that other perpetual miracle and mobile-the Heart-hush its tumult-and mortal man might know the nature as well as the name of peace!

Among the many equine gifts made us, in those days, by our friends on mainland and isle, was one of great powers and extraordinary genius, whom, for sake of the giver, we valued above all the rest-and whom we christened by the euphonious name of his birthplace among the waves-Colonsay. A cob let us call him, though he was not a cob-for he showed blood of a higher, a Neptunian strain; an iron-grey let us call him, though he was not an iron-grey-for his shoulders, and flanks, and rump, were dappled even as if he had been a cloud-steed of the Isle of Sky; a hog-mane let us call him, though he was not a hog-mane, for wild above rule or art, that high-ridged arch disdained the shears, and in spite of them showed at once in picturesque union boarish bristle and leonine hair; a cropear let us call him, though he was not a crop-ear, for over one only of those organs had the aurist achieved an imperfect triumph, while the other, unshorn of all its beams, was indeed a flapper, so that had you seen or heard it in the obscure twilight, you would have crouched before the coming of an elephant. His precise height is not known on earth even unto this day, for he abhorred being measured, and after the style in which he repelled various artful attempts to take his altitude by timber or tape, no man who valued his life at a tester would, with any such felonious intent, have laid hand on his shoulder. Looking at him you could not help thinking of the days "when wild 'mid rocks the noble savage ran;

while you felt the idea of breaking him to be as impracticable as impious—such specimen seemed he, as he stood before you, of stubbornness and freedom-while in his eye was concentrated the stern light of an indomitable self-will amounting to the sublime.

To give even a slight sketch of the character of Colonsay would far transcend the powers of the pen now employed on these pages-for than Pope's Duke Wharton he was a more incomprehensible antithesis. At times the summer cloud not more calm than he-the summer cloud, moving with one equable motion, all by itself, high up along a level line that is invisible to the half-shut eyes of the poet lying on his back, miles below among earth-flowers, till the heavenly creature, surely life-imbued, hath passed from horizon to horizon, away like a dubious dream! Then all at once-we are now speaking of Colonsay-off like a storm-tost vapour along the cliffs, capriciously careering across cataracted chasms, and then whew! whirling in a moment over the mountain-tops! With no kind of confidence could you-if sober-count upon him for half a mile. Yet we have known him keep the not noiseless tenor of his way, at the jog-trot, for many miles, as if to beguile you into a belief that all danger of your losing your seat was over for that day, and that true wisdom, dismissing present fears, might be forming schemes for the safety of to-morrow's ride. Yet, ere sunset, pride had its fall. Pretending to hear something a-rustle in the hedge, or something a-crawl in the ditch, or something a-flow across the road below the stones, with a multitudinous stamp, and a multifarious start, as if he had been transformed from a quadruped at the most, into a centipede at the very least, he has wheeled round on a most perilous pivot, within his own length, and with the bit in his teeth, off due east, at that nameless pace far beyond the gallop, at which a mile-long avenue of trees seems one green flash of lightning, and space and time annihilated! You have lost your stirrups and your wits-yet instinct takes the place of reason and more than demi-corpsed, wholly incorporated and entirely absorbed in the mane-the hair and bristle of the boar-mane-leonine-you become part and parcel of the very cause of your own being hurried beyond the bounds of this visible diurnal sphere-and exist but in an obscure idea of an impersonation of an ultra-marine motion, which, in the