278

LOST IN THE SNOW.

account o' the death of the twa Bagmen in the snaw. Ane o' their horses—for the creturs are no ill mounted-slidders awa doun a bank, and gets jammed into a snaw-stall, where there's no room for turnin. The other horse grows obstinate wi' the sharp stour in his face, and proposes retreating to Dalnacardoch, tail foremost; but no being sae weel up to the walkin or the trottin backwards, as that English chiel Townsend, the pedestrian, he cloits1 doun first on his hurdies, and then on his tae side, the girths burst, and the saddle hangs only by a tack to the crupper.

North. Do you know, James, that though you are manifestly drawing a picture intended to be ludicrous, it is to me extremely pathetic?

Shepherd. The twa Cockneys are now forced to act as dismounted cavalry through the rest of the campaign, and sit doun and cry-pretty babes o' the wood-in each ither's arms! John Frost decks their noses and their ears with icicles—and each vulgar physiognomy partakes of the pathetic character of a turnip, making an appeal to the feelings on Halloween.Dinna sneeze that way when ane's speakin, sir!

North. You ought rather to have cried, "God bless you." Shepherd. A' this while neither the snaw nor the wund has been idle-and baith Cockneys are sitting up to the middle, poor creturs, no that verra cauld, for driftin snaw sune begins to fin' warm and comfortable, but, wae's me! unco, unco sleepy-and not a word do they speak!--and now the snaw is up to their verra chins, and the bit bonny, braw, stiff, fause shirt-collars that they were sae proud o' sticking at their chafts, are as hard as airn, for they've gotten a sair Scotch starchin, and the fierce North cares naething for their towsy hair a' smellin wi' Kalydor and Macassar, no it indeed, but twurls it a' into ravelled hanks, till the frozen mops bear nae earthly resemblance to the ordinary heads o' Cockneys;—and hoo indeed should they, lying in sic an unnatural and out-o'the-way place for them, as the moors atween Dalnacardoch and Dalwhinnie?

North. Oh James-say not they perished!

Shepherd. Yes, sir, they perished; under such circumstances, it would have been too much to expect of the vital spark that it should not have fled. It did so—and a pair of more inter1 Cloits-falls heavily.

esting Bagmen never slept the sleep of death. Gie me the lend o' your handkercher, sir, for I agree wi' you that the picture's verra pathetic.

North. Did you read, James, in one of Maga's Leading Articles, called "Glance over Selby's Ornithology," an account of the Red Tarn Raven Club devouring the corpse of a Quaker on the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn ?1

Shepherd. Ay,-what about it? I could hae dune't as weel mysel.

North. Do you know, James, that it gave great offence? Shepherd. I hae nae doubt that the birds o' prey, that keep gorging themsels for weeks after a great battle, gie great offence to thousands o' the wounded,-picking out their een, and itherwise hurting their feelings. Here a bluidy straight beak tweakin a general officer by the nose, and there a no less bluidy crooked ane tearing aff the ee-broos o' a drummer, and happin aff to eat them on the hollow round o' his ain drum,on which never will tattoo be beaten ony mair, for a musketball has gone through the parchment, and the "stormy music," as Cammel ca's it, is hushed for ever. What need a description o' the dreadfu' field, when it has been crappit and fallowed year after year, gie offence to ony rational reader? Surely no; and, therefore, why shudder at a joke about the death o' ae Quaker?-Tuts, tuts, it's a' nonsense.

North. Drinking, dancing, swearing, and quarrelling, going on all the time in Tomantoul, James, for a fair there is a wild rendezvous, as we both know, summer or winter; and thither flock the wildest spirits of the wildest clans-old soldiers, poachers, outlaws, bankrupt tradesmen from small towns, and bankrupt farmers from large farms, horse-coupers, cattledealers, sticket ministers, schoolmasters without scholars, land-measurers, supervisors and excisemen, tinkers, trampers, sportsmen, stray poets, contributors to Magazines-perhaps an editor-people of no profession, and men literally without a name, except it be recorded in the Hue and Cry, all imprisoned in a snow-storm, James! What matter if the whole body of them were dug out dead in the morning from the drift, a hundred feet high?

Shepherd. Ma faith, North, you've taen the word out o' my mouth; but hooly, hooly-let's get back frae Tamantowl to

1 See the Recreations of Christopher North, vol. iii. p. 81.

280

PORTUGAL.-CANNING.

Embro'. Onything gude in leeterature, sir, sin' Lammas Fair?

North. Why, my dear James, I live so entirely out of the world now, that you could not apply, for information of that kind, to a person less likely to afford it. I live on the Past.

Shepherd. Rather spare diet, sir, and apt to get musty. I prefer the Present—na, even the verra Future itsel—to the Past. But the Three a' mixed thegither, like rumbledethumps, makes a gran' head-dish at denner, or sooper either; and I never eat it onywhere in sic perfection as at Mr Awmrose's.

North. Have you heard, James, that we are absolutely going to have some war again? A furious Army of Refugees have invaded Portugal, and threaten to overthrow the Constitution.

Shepherd. I fear the plook o' war'll no come to a head. There's a want o' maitter. Leave the Portugals to fecht the collyshangie1 out by theirsels, and there may be some cracked crowns. But twa-three regiments o' our red-coats 'll put out the fire o' civil war afore it's weel kindled-—whilk 'll be a great pity. Isna there something rather ridiculous-like in the soun' o' an Army o' Refugees? It's only next best to an Army o' Runaways.

North. Britain, James, and France-what think you of a war between them, James?

Shepherd. For Godsake, dinna let us begin wi' politics, for under them I aye fin' my nature stupified within me—as if I were taukin no frae my ain thochts, but out o' a newspaper. A' I say is, that the times are wersh2 without bloodshed.

North. Did you read Canning's speech?

Shepherd. Na; but I'm gaun up to London in Feberwar, to hear him in the House o' Commons. Think ye that the best discourse "by Cameron thundered, or by Renwick poured,” of old, to a congregation of Covenanters, in a sky-roofed kirk o' cliffs in the wilderness, would have done to be read in Awmrose's here, wi' twa caunels on the table, and twa on the brace-piece helpin the fire to illuminate a board o' oysters, or ashet3 o' rizzered haddies, or a trencher o' toasted cheese? Nae doubt the discourse wad hae been a gude discourse onywhere but where the hands uplifted to heaven, the hair of 1 Collyshangie-squabble. 2 Wersh-insipid.

3 Ashet-dish; obviously a corruption of the French Assiette.

the preacher streaming in the wind, his eyes penetrating the clouds, the awful sound o' one voice, and one voice only, heard in the hush o' the desert ?-where the fixed faces o' the congregation, intent as if but one soul animated the whole mass, a' armed even on the Sabbath-day, and forgettin when hearkenin to the tidings o' salvation, o' the soun' o' the hoofs o' bluidy Claverse's dragoons?-Just sae in their ain way wi' Cannin's orations. You maun see the man himsel—and they say he has a' the outward powers and graces o' a great speaker; and as for his inwards, there can be nae doubt that his brain has a harl1 o' strong bricht thochts like fire-flaughts enlichtenin, or, as needs be, witherin and consumin a' opposition, like chaff, or stubble, or heather a-bleeze on the hill. North. You will also have an opportunity, James, of hearing Hume.2

Shepherd. O man! but he maun be an impident cretur that Hume, to lowse his tinkler jaw in the Hoose, afore three hunder British and Eerish gentlemen, wi' the sum of fiftyfour punds seven shillings and eightpence three farthings one doit, in his breeches pocket, diddled in interest frae the fun's o' the Greek Pawtriots, fechtin in their poverty for the freedom o' their native land."

North. He offered to refer the affair to arbitration, you know, James.

Shepherd. And what for didna he fix on three arbitrawtors? Does he think folk are to come forward o' their ain accord? He seems to think it a great feather in his cap that he didna commit evendoun cheatery and thievery on the Greeks. Grant that, which is mair than doubtful, hasna he proved himsel a greedy greedy fallow, and fonder far to hear the clink o' his ain cash than the shouts o' liberty frae that ance glorious country, whare genius and valour were native to the soil, and whare yet they are not dead but sleepin, and may— ay, will arise frae the bluidy dust, and tear out the Turkish crescent from the sky, ance mair free to the silver feet of their ain Diana!

North. He is a poor creature, in mind, soul, and heart

1 Harl-abundance.

2 Joseph Hume, for many years the leading Radical reformer in the House of Commons. He died in 1855, aged 78.

3 See ante, p. 228-9, note.

282

BROUGHAM ON HUME.

alike—and wears the interest of his scrip in his very face, in the hardness and hue of brass. How else durst he have risen from his breech after Canning-and like a turkey-cock, that is a bubbly-jock, James, have given vent to his vile gobble, ere the House had ceased to hear the cry, and view the flight, of the Eagle?

Shepherd. "An honest man's the noblest work of God!" North. The man's mind has so long busied itself with pounds, shillings, pence, halfpence, farthings, and doits, James, that it has utterly lost all perception of the higher interests to which they may be made subservient—and for which alone they can have any value in a nation's eyes.

Shepherd. I wad hate to dine wi' him at a tavern-for he wad aye be for threepin doun1 the bill; and oh! but he wad be shabby-shabby to the waiter. He wad never gie ony waiter even if she was a lassie-mair than tippence-and aiblins ane o' the bawbees o' an obsolete sort, that wadna gay nowadays-what they ca' an Eerish rap, or ane issued lang syne by some cotton-spinner in Manchester. We'll hear o' nae mair public denners to sic a meeser.

North. There is no saying, James. Whom will not party spirit in these days set up as an idol, basely bow down, and crawling worship it? Mr Brougham gave the scrub a hard hit on the kidneys, and it must have made him wince. Shepherd. Hoo was that?

North. Mr Brougham, in allusion to Hume's speech, declared himself incapable of "listening to the arithmetic of the Honourable Member for Aberdeen. There were circumstances," he said, "in which countries as well as individuals -might be placed, in which to compute cost was impossible, frivolous, disgraceful alike to the country and to the individual!"

Shepherd. Weel dune, Hairy. That was capital.

North. But before Hume had recovered from that welldelivered hit, Mr Brougham put in a facer that broke the brass like an egg-shell." To those upon whom such topics" (national faith and national honour, James) "are thrown away, however, and to whom the expense which any of their preparations might cost, was so considerable an object, and to how much it might mount up by the loss of the interest (loud

1 Threepin doun-beating down.