In our younger days we were more famous for our pedestrian than for our equestrian feats; liker Pollux than Castor. Yet were we no mean horseman; riding upwards of thirteen stone, we seldom mounted the silk jacket, yet we have won matches -and eyewitnesses are yet alive of our victory over old Q- on the last occasion he ever went to scaleafter as pretty a run home-so said the best judges-as was ever seen at Newmarket. Had you beheld us a half-century ago in a steeple-chase, you would have sworn we were either the Gentleman in Black, or about to enter the Church. Then we used to stick close to the tail of the pack, to prevent raw, rash lads from riding over the hounds-and what a tale could we tell of the day thou didst die-thou grey, musty, moth-eaten Fox-face! now almost mouldered away on the wall-there -below the antlers of the Deerking of Braemar, who, as the lead struck his heart, leaped twenty feet up in the air, before his fall was proclaimed by all the echoes of the forest. We hear them now in the silence of the wilderness. Pleasant but mournful to the soul is the memory of joys that are past, saith old Ossian-and from the cavern of old North's breast issueth solemnly the same oracular response! For many a joyous crew are they not ghosts!

Gout and rheumatism were ours -we sold our stud, and 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-ways-and 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 any thing was sent to us by a friend above that

mark, it was understood the gift might be returned without offencethough, 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 ingrafted an acquired taste for hogmanes-and on that again was superinduced a desire for crop ears till erelong 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❜deared, fourteen-hand-and-an-inch cobs-even in carts, shandry dans, 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 sixstalled 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 silvan-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 in the gloomy light, in ten yards was at the top of his speed, up-bill 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 school-house 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 iron-grey --" but more through toil than age" -nothing grizzling the knowledgebox 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 birth-place among the waves-Colonsay. A cob let us call him, though he was not a cob-for he shewed blood of a higher, a Neptunian strain; an iron-grey let us call him, though he was not an irongrey-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 highridged arch disdained the shears, and in spite of them shewed at once in picturesque union boarish bristle and leonine hair; a crop-ear let us call him, though he was not a cropear, 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 fe

lonious 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 youif 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 boarmane-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 miserable penury of artificial language, men are necessitated to call a gallop.

An absent man is a more disgusting, but not so dangerous an animal, as an absent horse. Now, of all the horses we ever knew, the most absent was Colonsay. Into what profound reveries have we not seen him fall-while "his drooped head sunk gradually low," till his long upperlip almost touched the road, as if he had been about to browze on dust or dirt, yet nothing was farther from his mind than any such intentionfor his eyes were shut-and there he was jog-trotting in the sunshine sound asleep! We knew better than to ride him with spurs-and he knew better than to care for the cuddy-heels of a gouty sexagenarian. His dappled coat was sleek and bright as if burnished with Day and Martin's patent greying-had those great practical chemists then flourished, and confined their genius exclusively to the elucidation of that colour. But his hide was hard as that of a rhinoceros, and callous to a whip that would have cut a Cockney to the liver. The leather was never tanned that could have established a raw on those hips. Ply the thong till your right hand hung idle as if palsied by your side-the pace was the same and milestone after milestone shewed their numerals, each at the appointed second. But "a change came o'er the spirit of his dream"-and from imagining himself drawing peats along a flat in Dream-land, he all at once fell into the delusion that he was let loose from his day's darg into the pleasant meadows of Idlesse, and up with his heels in a style of funking more splendid in design and finished in execution than any exhibition of the kind it has ever been our lot to see out of Stony Arabia. The discovery soon made by him that we

were on his back, abated nothing of his vagaries, but, on the contrary, only made them more vehement; while on such occasions-and they were not unfrequent nor can we account for the phenomenon on any other theory than the one we have now propounded-his neighing outdid that of his own sire-a terrific mixture of snuffing, snorting, blowing, squeaking, grunting, groaning, roaring, bellowing, shrieking and yelling, that indeed "gave the world assurance of a horse," and murdered silence-for the echoes dared not answer-nor, indeed, could they be expected to understand-or if they understood-to speak a language so portentously preternatural, and beyond the powers of utterancethough great-of blind cliff or widemouthed cavern.

He was a miraculous jumper-of wooden gates and stone-walls. He cleared six feet like winking; and as to paling, or hedges, or any thing of that sort, he pressed upon them in a sidelong sort of way peculiar to himself, now with shoulder and now with rump, and then butting with his bull-like forehead, marched through the breach as coolly as a Gurwood or a Mackie at the head of a forlorn-hope at Ciudad Rodrigo or Badajos, To a ha-ha he cried "ha-ha!" and up or down in reddeer fashion-through clover-field or flowering shrubbery-all one to Colonsay. In a four-acre pasture, twenty men, halter in hand, might in vain combine to catch him; and as for the old stale trick that rarely fails to entrap the rest of his racecorn tossed a la tambourine—he would give his forelock a shake, and, wheeling right shoulder forwards, break through the cordon like a clap of thunder. Now all this was very excusable-nay, perhaps praiseworthy-while he was barebacked and unbestridden; but if, on passing an enclosure of an inviting aspect, whether of grass or oats, he chose to be either gluttonously or epicurishly inclined, the accident of your being on the saddle, and on your way along the high-road to town or village where you had business to transact, or to pay a visit, was then a trifle with him unworthy of a moment's consideration; and then, without a moment's warning, he

either jumped like a cat over the wall, with his heels pushing down a few yards of coping, or if a good, stout, thickset thorn-hedge stood in the way of the gratification of his appetite, he demolished it in like manner as we had seen him demoJish a hundred, and bore us through the enemies' bayonets across the counterscarp, over the glacis, up to the crest of the position where perhaps a tree stood by way of standard, and then setting himself to serious eating, no man could have pulled his nose from the ground, under a Briareus.

Such conduct was at least intelligible; but that is more than we could ever bring ourselves to think of some of his other acts-such, for example, as changing his mind, without any assignable reason, when to all appearance jog-trotting along, perfectly well pleased with his journey, and by means of an easy roundish turn, without any bustle or symptom of impatience whatever, changing his direction, and with imperturbable gravity mildly taking us home again, as if we were of our own accord jogging back for our purse or pocketbook. Such must have been one of the many suppositions at many times ventured upon by roadside stonebreakers, once more bowing their heads to us, so soon after our declination behind the hill unexpectedly reappearing with our face to the orient. The servants began to suspect that these returns were made purposely by us that we might catch them caterwauling; and the housekeeper herself, we thought, sometimes looked sulky when our hem brought her to the door; but on divulging to her the secret, we were restored to our former place in her esteem. The lintel of the stabledoor was rather low, and on two occasions our friend walked into his stall with us lying extended on his back, with our hatless head over his neck, the only position in which we could have evited death—a knee-pan each time looking blue on its escape from dislocation. Yet no sooner was the seemingly stable-sick steed tied up in his stall, but with a JackShepherd touch, he jerked his head out of the collar, and jumping over an old cairn-looking wall, began

chasing the cows, ever and anon turning up his lip in the air as if he were laughing at the lumbering gait of the great, big, fat, unwieldy animals straddling out of his way, with their swollen udders, while the Damsel of the Dairy flew shouting and waving her apron to the rescue, fearing that the hoped-for quey-calf of the teeming Alderney might, in her mother's fright, be untimeously born-nor hesitating to aver that it was manifestly that wicked Colonsay's intent to bring about such lamentable catastrophe. But we are assured that he had no idea of Madame Francaise being as ladies wish to be who love their lords;" for though the most incomprehensible of God's creatures, poor Colonsay had not an atom of cruelty in his whole composition; and, except when he took it for a clegg, would not have hurt a fly.

His strength was even more surprising than his agility, and we should have had no fears for the result in backing him for five pulls at an oak root, against a First-prize Suffolk Punch. True that his nerves were delicate, like those of almost all other people of genius; but the nervous system, a subject, by the by, that seems less and less understood every day, is one thing, and the muscular system another and the osseous system is a third, and sinews are a fourth; in these three he excelled all mare-born, and was in good truth the NAG OF THE AGE. If you had but seen him in the plough! Single on the stiffest soil, with his nose almost touching his counter, and his mighty forehand working far more magnificently than any steam-engine, for there you saw power and heard it not, how he tore his unimpeded progress through the glebe fast falling over in six-inch deep furrows, over which Ceres rejoiced to see the sheeted sower, careless of rooks, scatter golden in the sunshine the glancing seed! Then behind his heels how hopped the harrows! Clods were soon turned to tufts, and tufts triturated into soil, and soil so pulverized, that the whole four-andtwenty acres, so laid down, smiled smooth as a garden, and might have been sown with flowers! Ploughing and harrowing may truly be said to