tain, who now for the first time broke silence to request the favour of a pinch from the well-known tabatière, after which a more specific enquiry was instituted into the predisposing and proximate causes of Dr Drench's disaster. The cause was but too soon made manifest. My cousin Nicholas had encountered the Doctor at the Hall door on his return; and had stopped him to make enquiries respecting the health of his patient, whose indisposition he vehemently deplored, as well as that a silly joke of his own should have produced it. For this he declared he should never be able to forgive himself, although it had never entered his imagination that the trick could have been attended with consequences so alarming. Touched by his remorse, the good Doctor comforted him with the information that, if nothing occurred to produce a relapse, his aunt would not, he trusted, be so serious a sufferer as he had at first feared, and seized the opportunity to read his young penitent a short but energetic lecture on the folly and wickedness (so he expressed himself) of thus terrifying, or even inconveniencing others, merely to gratify a silly and mischievous propensity. My cousin Nicholas listened to these well-intended and well-delivered observations with the profoundest attention; he heaved a sigh at their conclusion, and with a becoming gravity assented to their justice, at the same time volunteering a promise that this offence should be his last. Pleased with the effect of his own oratory, and nothing doubting that the contrition of the youthful offender was, for the moment at least, sincere, Dr Drench put one foot into the stirrup attached to his galloway, which a groom had now led out, and throwing his leg over the saddle, failed to remark that his proselyte had taken the opportunity afforded by his back being turned for the nonce, to introduce a large thistle beneath the tail of the quadruped on whose back he had now attained so perilous an elevation. The effect was obvious and immediate: utterly unaccustomed to any application of a similar description, and highly resenting the indignity thus offered to his person, Jack, as sober a gelding as any in the three kingdoms, instantly evinced his sense of the degradation to which he had been subjected by violent and repeated calcitrations of no common altitude, and in every direction. Becoming every moment more eager to relieve himself from so disgraceful and inconvenient an adjunct as that which now encumbered and annoyed his rear, he at length took the resolution of starting off at score, and soon deviated so much from his usually rectilinear mode of progression as to convey his unfortunate rider to the edge of a large sewer, into which all the filth and drainings of the Hall stables, with other not less noisome concomitants, eventually flowed. Here, on the very brink of this abyss, an unlucky curvet, describing an angle of forty-five degrees, dismounted the hapless equestrian, and precipitated him head foremost into the centre of the "vast profound." But for the groom, who had brought the Doctor his horse, and witnessed the whole of the foregoing scene, poor Dr Drench would probably have encountered a fate compared with which the not altogether dissimilar end of the "Young princes might murther'd in the Tower have been esteemed a merciful dispensation, since, whether we subscribe to Walpole's "doubts" or not, there is no reason to imagine that the means employed for their suffocation were attended by that "rank compound of villanous smells" which served in the present case to heighten the catastrophe. By his assistance the sufferer was, with some difficulty, extricated from the imminent peril in which he was plunged, and was reconducted to the Hall, whither he once more repaired for the double purpose of complaint and depuria tion. These particulars were, with some little trouble, at length collected from the soiled lips of the indignant Doctor, and confirmed by the supplementary attestation of the servant who observed the transaction, and whose levity in giving his evidence (the fellow absolutely grinned) drew down upon him a well-merited rebuke from the Court. A summons was instantly despatched, commanding the immediate attendance of the accused, but my cousin Nicholas was nowhere to be found. That considerate young gentleman, on witnessing the "Descent of Drench," being well aware that liberty unexpectedly recovered is, in nine instances out of ten, abused, and degenerates into licentiousness, hastily followed the enfranchised steed, with the view of preventing any mischief which might accrue to himself or others from this his sudden manumission. The end of the avenue which opened on the high-road near the entrance of the village of Underdown, presented a formidable barrier to the farther progress of the liberated nag in the shape of a lofty gate, flanked on each side by a thick plantation of evergreens. To leap it was out of the question, as poor Jack held foxhunting in utter abomination, and had never cleared any thing more formidable than a gutter in his life; to escape on either side was impossible, the shrubs were absolutely impervious; so having discovered in the moment of hesitation what the headlong precipitation of his flight had hitherto prevented him from perceiving, namely, that he had long since got rid of his old tormentor, the thistle, all these considerations, joined with the recollection that he had neither galloped so long nor so fast at any one time during the last fourteen years, induced the philosophic Jack to await quietly my cousin's approach, and once more to surrender his newly acquired freedom, without making a single struggle to retain it. Having thus possessed himself of a horse, my cousin Nicholas thought he would take a ride. Many reasons concurred to render his doing so particularly advisable: in the first place, horse exercise is strongly recommended by the faculty, and has a tendency towards bracing the nerves; then it happened to be a remarkably fine day; inclination prompted, opportunity courted him, and he was, moreover, morally certain, from the situation in which he had last beheld him, that the owner of his Pegasus stood in no sort of need of him at present; in addition to all which, an undefined suspicion had by this time entered my cousin's head, that certain disputatious bickerings might, by possibility, arise at the Hall out of the circumstances which had so lately taken place, and that a controversy might ensue, in which he might find himself personally involved to an extent greater than would be altogether pleasant to his feelings. Now, my cousin Nicholas hated squabbling about trifles, nor was he ever known to enjoy a joke at his own expense. Any of these motives, if taken separately, would have been sufficient, there was no resisting them all combined--so my cousin cantered away, and, having a pretty taste enough for the picturesque, was highly delighted by several charming prospects of the surrounding country which he encountered in the course of his ride. So much, indeed, did they engross his attention, that time slipped away unheeded, and he did not reach Underdown Hall, on his return, till long after the hour which had dismissed the Doctor to his own "Sweet Home," as well scoured, scrubbed, and scraped, as if he had gone through a regular course of brickdust, sand, and emery paper. CHAP. IV. Dr THESE last freaks of my cousin Nicholas were too important, both in their nature and consequences, to admit of their being passed over without some little notice. Drench, in addition to the deranged state of his wardrobe and osteology, complained bitterly of the injury done to "Jack," who unluckily, from some cause or other, happened to fall very lame about this period, a circumstance which the Doctor failed not to attribute to my cousin's equestrian performances; and he positively refused any farther attendance, friendly or professional, at Underdown Hall, while it contained so facetious an inmate. My mother availed herself of the occasion to renew, in the most forcible terms, certain suggestions previously made as to the propriety of her nephew's removal to some public seminary, where, under the pruning and train ing hand of a master, those vigorous shoots of intellect might acquire a proper direction-hinting, at the same time, that considerable danger might arise, lest, like all other plants of equal exuberance, his genius, from being allowed to run wild and uncultivated, might eventually become weak and exhausted, or even perish immaturely, from the force of its own luxuriance. She even went so far, when once more sufficiently recovered to join the family circle, as to make his temporary secession from home the sine quâ non of her own continued residence there. It may, however, be doubted how far her well-meant remonstrances would have succeeded with Sir Oliver, in inducing him to part from his darling Nicholas, had not that young gentleman's genius assumed at this time a peculiarly malignant aspect, and impelled him, in perfect contradiction to his usual custom, to direct the next effort of his wit against the Baronet himself. A long passage at the extremity of the house (used in the late Baronet's time as a laundry, but dignified by the present with the name of the "Northern Gallery") contained, among much other curious matter, a series of portraits, representing sundry real or supposed worthies of the illustrious house of Bullwinkle. At the extreme end stood the redoubted Roger himself, or rather his armour, consisting of an habergeon, or shirt of chain mail, a cuirass, which some hypercritical Meyrick might not improbably have referred to a later age -a helmet, gauntlets, and shield; all which had, till within these few years, occupied a niche in one of the aisles of the parish church of Underdown. They had swung suspended over a tomb, on which the mutilated remains of a recumbent figure still .reclined, though so much defaced, as to render it difficult to pronounce with certainty whether it were the effigies of a human being or not. At the lower extremity, however, those parts which corresponded to the legs of a man, were manifestly crossed, and this circumstance at once induced Sir Oliver to pronounce it to be the tomb of a Crusader, and, if of a Crusader, a fortiori of that flower of chivalry, the magnanimous Roger himself; nay, so far did he carry his enthusiasm in favour of this hypothesis, that nothing but the sacred character of the offender had prevented him in his earlier years from challenging a former incumbent of the parish, who observed, with more of levity than of reverence, that "the position was undoubtedly that either of a Templar or a Tailor." This palpable attempt to detract from his venerated ancestor eight-ninths of his consequence in the scale of humanity, my uncle never forgave.— But to return. In the On the death of the aforesaid scoffer, my uncle obtained the consent of the Rev. Mr Bustle, whom he then presented to the living, the Churchwardens, for divers weighty reasons, not opposing his wishes, to remove the several pieces of armour, mentioned above, from their exalted situation to his own house, and as a due acknowledgment of their politeness, Sir Oliver presented the parish in return with a handsome set of communion plate for the use of the church. Having secured his prize, his first care was to have the rust and accumulated impurities of years removed as much as possible, and the whole put into a complete state of repair, under the immediate and personal surveillance of the village blacksmith. course of the process, the remains of something like a device, which time and damps had combined to obliterate, were discovered on the shield, and the delighted antiquary forthwith availed himself of the talents of a wandering artist, then luckily engaged in painting a new sign for the King's Arms," to delineate (or, as he said, replace) upon its surface three golden fetterlocks, clasped, in a field azure, the ancient heraldic blazonry of all the Bullwinkles. Thus renovated and restored to their pristine splendour, the arms of Sir Roger were erected, in the manner of a trophy, over a pedestal inscribed with the Knight's name, and placed in the most conspicuous part of the gallery. This was Sir Oliver's favourite apartment, and thither he retired the evening after my mother's attack upon him, to reflect upon her request, and on the alternative she had presented to his choice. My uncle perambulated the gal lery for some time in silence, his hands crossed behind his back, and his eyes fixed upon the floor, while his footsteps, slow and unequal, betrayed the irresolution of his mind. His sister-so long lost, so lately recovered!-to lose her again seemed the very acme of misfortune, especially since the increasing comforts of his home, and his reduced expenditure, had taught him fully to appreciate her value. But then, again, his son the beloved of his heart, the delight of his eyes; the youthful scion destined to transmit the blood of the Bullwinkles to remotest posterity; the last sole hope of an honourable name! True, indeed, Nick was certainly rather too bad-rather too much devoted to pleasantry, and of a disposition requiring the curb rather than the spur; but then to banish him from the home of his fathers, an exile from those scenes which his progenitors had so long (in all likelihood) trodden-which somebody had unquestionably trodden, and Bullwinkles more probably than any body else; there was sorrow in the thought-it was not to be thought of. No!" exclaimed my uncle, facing about suddenly, and confronting the panoply of Sir Roger-" No!" cried he, extending his hand with the force and majesty of a Demosthenes, "never be it said that the heir of Underdown was, even for an hour, thrust like an expatriated fugitive from that roof which has sheltered so many generations of his forefathers!-never be it said that a youth of such noble endowments, so alive to the dignity of his family, so justly proud of his high descent and unblemished lineage, so" The glance of Sir Oliver rested for a moment on the emblazoned escutcheon of Sir Roger de Bolevaincle, whom he was about to apostrophize-did that glance deceive him or was a miracle indeed worked to cast a scandal upon a hitherto untainted pedigree? He paused abruptly, and stept forward with all the agility he was master of, in order to convince himself that the object which had "seared his eyeballs," was but an "unreal mockery." But no! the phantasm, instead of vanishing at his approach, as he had half hoped it would have done, stoutly stood its ground, and presented to his horror-struck and incredulous gaze the apparition of a "bend sinister," that opprobrious mark of shame and illegitimacy, drawn dia. gonally athwart the golden fetterlocks in the azure field, the immaculate and ever-honoured bearings of the Bullwinkles, while the family motto, Sans peur et sans reproche, so noble and appropriate, was rendered completely illegible by a broad streak of black paint. Sir Oliver rushed from the gallery in a paroxysm of rage and astonishment. The servants, every soul in the house, from my mother down to the scullion, were examined as to their knowledge of the author of this piece of atrocity. No one, however, was found able or willing to throw any light upon the subject, till Miss Kitty Pyefinch suggesting the probability," that, after all, it was only a joke of Master Nicholas's," one of the footmen recollected that, some two days before, a carpenter, employed in painting and repairing the fences in the grounds, had complained to him that Master Nicholas had run away with his paint-pot and brushes. The subsequent discovery and identification of these very articles in a corner of the gallery, no longer left any doubt as to the person of the culprit. The fate of my cousin Nicholas was from this moment decided. A decree, as irrevocable as those of the Medes and Persians, was pronounced, and another fortnight saw Master Bullwinkle an inmate of the parsonage house, occupied by the Rev. Mr Bustle, who to his clerical functions superadded that of master of the menagerie to " a limited number of select pupils," in a parish a few miles distant, which he held in commendam with that of Underdown. The term of my own holydays having expired, I also left the Hall on the same day my cousin quitted it, and returned to Westminster. While Mr Bustle was labouring diligently in his vocation as scavenger to the Augean stable of my cousin Nicholas's intellect, and endeavouring, with all the persevering spirit of the most industrious kitchen wench, to scour out certain stains and blemishes in his manners, derived, as he said, from the defective mode of his early education,-while he was "preparing him for the University" by a very summary process, not unlike that by which poulterers in the metropolis are said to prepare turkeys for the spit, viz.: by cramming them with all sorts of good things, till their crops are ready to burst from repletion-I was proceeding, through the usual routine of the foundation of which I was an alumnus, towards the same desirable end; and, as the plan adopted by my instructors was that of going on in the old, straightforward, beaten track, used by our fathers before us, without bewildering themselves in the modern fashionable short cuts to the Temple of Knowledge, or "leaping learning's hedges and ditches," in order to arrive at their goal by a less circuitous route, it cannot be supposed that my progress in the belles lettres was half so rapid or so brilliant as that of my cousin. Indeed, the intellectual as well as the corporal gullet of Mr Nicholas Bullwinkle was of an extraordinary capacity, and, from its amazing powers of expansion, might almost have warranted a suspicion that it must be composed of Indian rubber. If its powers of digestion were not commensurate, but suffered the raw material which it received to remain crude and unconcocted, that could hardly be supposed the fault of his purveyor, the Rev. Mr Bustle. In point of fact, that learned gentleman was in a very short time mightily pleased with the proficiency of his new pupil, who, as he declared, evinced a decided taste for poetry, as well as for polite literature in general, an opinion in which his father (who, to say the truth, was not perhaps qualified to do more than hazard a conjecture on the subject) perfectly coincided, so that in the space of a couple of years my cousin Nicholas ran an imminent risk of being considered an absolute lusus naturæ, a prodigy of genius. His fame about the same time was fully confirmed and established by the fiat of Miss Pyefinch herself, whose exquisite tact and experience in all matters of this description rendered her, as we have before taken occasion to observe, sole and undisputed arbitress of the literary merits and demerits of every pretender within five miles of Underdown. This excellent lady, whose prejudices at no very distant period had certainly operated to my cousin's disadvantage, had been of late much propitiated by various effusions, of rather an amatory cast, which, issuing from the pen of the young poet, had been, with the appearance of much devotedness, most humbly inscribed to herself; nor was the deportment of the juvenile bard, on his occasional returns to the Hall, such as wholly to supersede the idea that her charms, like those of the celebrated Ninon, had achieved a conquest, and lighted up a flame in a youthful breast, when somewhat past what rigid critics might call the period of their maturity. Several of these tender lays were, by Miss Pyefinch, extolled above all that Hammond or Moore ever wrote; and though many persons were of opinion, from the hyperbolical compliments contained in them, that Mr Nicholas had either taken leave of his senses, or was only indulging his old propensity to "hoaxing," she never could be brought to subscribe to the one or the other. One of these lyrics, containing less of passion and more of sentiment than the generality of his effusions, I shall beg to present my readers with. It was placed by him in Miss Pyefinch's hand one fine evening after his return from a solitary ramble in the garden, being rudely written down with a pencil, and is, on the whole, no bad specimen of my cousin's poetical abilities. THE POET'S Bower, No Zeuxis ere its walls adorn'd, No Phidias bade its columns rise; Such aids the humbler artist scorn'd, Nor taught its towers to court the skies. |