We must now draw the spectator from the above-mentioned objects to a little piscatorial sportsman, who, apart from them, and in the retirement of his own thoughts upon worms, ground-bait, and catgut, lends his aid, together with a lively little amateur waterman, paddling about in a little boat, selfishly built to hold none other than himself—­a hill rising in the middle ground, and two or three minor editions of the same towards the distance, carefully dotted with trees, after the fashion of a ready-made portable park from the toy depot in the Lowther Arcade—­two bee-hives, a water-mill, some majestic smoke, something that looks like a skein of thread thrown over a mountain, and the memorable chiaro-scuro, form the interesting episodes of this glorious essay in the epic pastoral.

* * * * *

SYNCRETIC LITERATURE

    Observations on the Epic Poem of Giles Scroggins and Molly
    Brown—­resumed.

The fatal operation of the unavoidable, ever-impending, ruthless shears of the stern controller of human destiny, and curtailer of human life—­the action by which

  “Fate’s scissors cut Giles Scroggins’ thread,”

or rather the thread of Giles Scroggins’ life, at once and most completely establishes the wholesome moral as to the fearful uncertainty of all sublunary anticipations, and stands forth a beautiful beacon to warn the over-weaning “worldly wisemen” from their often too-fondly-cherished dreams of realising, by their own means and appliances, the darling projects of their ambitious hopes!

The immediate effect of the operation performed by Fate’s scissors, or rather by Fate herself—­as she was the great and absolute disposer—­to whom the implement employed was but a matter of fancy; for had Fate so chosen, a bucket, a bowie-knife, a brick-bat, a black cap, or a box of patent pills, might, as well as her destructive shears, have made a tenant for a yawning grave of doomed Giles Scroggins.  We say, the immediate effect arising from this cutting cause was one in which both parties—­the living bride and defunct bridegroom—­were equally concerned, their lover’s co-partnership rendering each liable for the acts or accidents of the other; therefore as may be (and we think is) clearly established, under these circumstances,

  “They could not be mar-ri-ed!”

There is something deliciously affecting in the beautiful drawing out of the last syllable!—­it seems like the lingering of the heart’s best feelings upon the blighted prospects of its purest joys!—­the ceremony that would have completed the union of the loving maiden and admiring swain, blending, as it were, like the twin prongs of a brass-bound toasting-fork, their interests in one common cause.  The ceremony of love’s concentration can never be performed! but the heart-feeling poet extends each tiny syllable even to its utmost stretch, that the tear-dropping reader may, while gulping down his sympathies, make at least a handsome mouthful of the word.