Imatges de pàgina
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7. (S.)

Stooping, tearing, floundering, and bleeding your way, through a boggy, briary copse, with here and there a green rushy pool, which takes you by surprise; so that you are more and more entangled and engulphed as you advance, till you are, after all, necessitated to turn back, and encore all your sufferings; and so emerge at last, looking like a half murdered beggar :

Ned Tes. "Quem circum, limus niger, et deformis arundo,

tardâque palus inamabilis undâ

Alligat, et novies Sticks interfusa coercent." VIrg.

8. (T.)

Walking obliquely up a steep hill, when the ground is what the vulgar call greasy.

Ned Tes. Sad work!" Labitur et labetur-volubilis!"-HOR.

9. (S.)

Feeling your foot slidder over the back of a toad, which you took for a stepping-stone, in your dark evening walk

"Pressit humi nitens, trepidusque repentè

refugit !"

In like manner, crushing snails, beetles, slugs, &c. whether you will or not.

Tes. Bad enough, Sir, bad enough;-but this, and all the specimens of bad footing we have yet mentioned are carpetting, compared with what follows, as you'll soon confess :

10. (T.)

While you are out with a walking-party, after heavy rains—one shoe suddenly sucked off by the boggy clay; and then in making a long and desperate stretch, (which fails,) with the hope of recovering it, the other left in the same predicament : -the second stage of ruin is that of standing, or rather tottering, in blank despair, with both bare feet planted, ancle-deep, in the quagmire.—The last-I had almost said the dying-scene of the tragedy, (that of deliberately cramming first one, and then the other clogged polluted foot into its choaked-up shoe, after having scavengered your hands and gloves in slaving to drag up each, separately, out of its deep bed, and in this state proceeding on your walk,) is too dreadful for representation. The crown of the catastrophe is, that each of the party floundering in his, or her, own gulph, is utterly

disabled from assisting, or being assisted by, the

rest.

Sen. " O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!"-If, however, it may afford you any consolation, under the recollection of a calamity so dreadful, to hear an accurate description of it from the master-hand of Tacitus, attend, while I recite it: "Miscetur operantium clamor-cuncta pariter adversalocus uligine profundâ, idem ad gradum instabilis, procedentibus lubricus; corpora neque librare interundas poterant ..... Non vox, et mutui hortatus juvabant: nihil strenuus ab ignavo, sapiens a prudenti, consilia a casu differre ;-cuncta pari violentiâ involvebantur!"*—And now, my friend, let me relieve

*Confusion and clamour prevail among the labouring victims-all things conspiring equally against them; -the place a deep swamp, treacherous to the foot, and more and more slippery as they advance; neither could they balance their bodies amidst the boggy marsh

The voice of mutual encouragement was heard in vain-All distinction lost between the strenuous and the tardy, the wise and the weak, circumspection and casualty; all were indiscriminately involved in the same overpowering calamity!

your mind, by a meaner, though by no means a tolerable misery.

11. (S.)

Immediately after a very heavy rain, pushing through the very narrow path of a very long field of very high corn:-nankeens.

Tes. Talking of rain—

12. (T.)

Setting out, on a fine morning, for a review-and, on your arrival at the ground, violent rain coming on, and continuing without one moment's intermission during the whole of the spectacle; just at the close of which, the sun peeps out from his hidingplace, and laughs in your face.

Sen. So much for a wet review; but I can more than match you with a dry one; ecce signum:

19. (S.)

Attending, on foot, a review of cavalry, on a deep sandy plain, in a furious wind; which ushers the dust into your eyes from every quarter of the compass to which you turn for refuge-not to

mention the costume of a Miller, in which the said wind and dust agree that you shall appear.

It was at just such a review, I doubt not, that poor Young was inspired with the following most remarkable lines:

"then each atom,

Asserting its indisputable right

To dance, would form an universe of dust!"
Night Thoughts, N. 9, or, The Consolation.

14. (T.)

Ploughing up your newly-rolled gravel-walk, by walking over, or rather sinking into it, after a soaking torrent of rain.

Sen. Nothing can be more pitiable !—but having now sufficiently defiled ourselves with dust and mire, suppose we pass to some of the less ignoble Miseries of the country;—I will shew you the way:

15. (S.)

While walking with others, in a line, through a narrow path, being perpetually addressed by the lady immediately before you, who, although she

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