great way through a sea of a regular pattern,
like a lady's collar. A benevolent elderly
gentleman of the last century, with a
powdered head, kept guard, in oil and
varnish, over a most perplexing piece of
furniture on a table; in appearance between
a driving seat and an angular knife-box, but,
when opened, a musical instrument of
tinkling wires, exactly like David's harp
packed for travelling. Everything became a
nick-nack in this curious room. The copper
tea-kettle, burnished up to the highest point
of glory, took his station on a stand of his
own at the greatest possible distance from
the fire-place, and said, "By your leave, not a
kittle, but a bijou." The Staffordshire-ware
butter-dish with the cover on, got upon a
little round occasional table in a window,
with a worked top, and announced itself to
the two chairs accidentally placed there, as
an aid to polite conversation, a graceful trifle
in china to be chatted over by callers, as
they airily trifled away the visiting moments
of a butterfly existence, in that rugged old
village on the Cumberland Fells. The very
footstool could not keep the floor, but got
upon the sofa, and therefrom proclaimed
itself, in high relief of white and liver-colored
wool, a favourite spaniel coiled up for repose.
Though, truly, in spite of its bright glass
eyes, the spaniel was the least successful
assumption in the collection: being perfectly
flat, and dismally suggestive of a recent
mistake in sitting down, on the part of some
corpulent member of the family.

There were books, too, in this room; books
on the table, books on the chimney-piece,
books in an open press in the corner. Fielding
was there, and Smollett was there, and
Steele and Addison were there, in dispersed
volumes; and there were tales of those who
go down to the sea in ships, for windy nights;
and there was really a choice of good books
for rainy days or fine. It was so very pleasant
to see these things in such a lonesome
by-place—so very agreeable to find these
evidences of a taste, however homely,
that went beyond the beautiful cleanliness and
trimness of the house—so fanciful to imagine
what a wonder the room must be to the little
children born in the gloomy village—what
grand impressions of it those of them who
became wanderers over the earth would
carry away; and how, at distant ends of the
world, some old voyagers would die, cherishing
the belief that the finest apartment
known to men was once in the Hesket-
Newmarket Inn, in rare old Cumberland—
it was such a charmingly lazy pursuit to
entertain these rambling thoughts over the
choice oat-cake and the genial whiskey, that
Mr. Idle and Mr. Goodchild never asked
themselves how it came to pass that the men
in the fields were never heard of more, how
the stalwart landlord replaced them without
explanation, how his dog-cart came to be
waiting at the door, and how everything
was arranged without the least arrangement,
for climbing to old Carrock's shoulders, and
standing on his head.

Without a word of inquiry, therefore,
The Two Idle Apprentices drifted out
resignedly into a fine, soft, close, drowsy,
penetrating rain; got into the landlord's light
dog-cart, and rattled off, through the village,
for the foot of Carrock. The journey at the
outset was not remarkable. The Cumberland
road went up and down like other roads;
the Cumberland curs burst out from backs of
cottages and barked like other curs, and the
Cumberland peasantry stared after the dog-
cart amazedly, as long as it was in sight, like
the rest of their race. The approach to the
foot of the mountain resembled the approaches
to the feet of most other mountains all over
the world. The cultivation gradually ceased,
the trees grew gradually rare, the road
became gradually rougher, and the sides of the
mountain looked gradually more and more
lofty, and more and more difficult to get up.
The dog-cart was left at a lonely farm-house.
The landlord borrowed a large umbrella, and,
assuming in an instant the character of the
most cheerful and adventurous of guides, led
the way to the ascent. Mr. Goodchild looked
eagerly at the top of the mountain, and, feeling
apparently that he was now going to be
very lazy indeed, shone all over wonderfully
to the eye, under the influence of
the contentment within and the moisture
without. Only in the bosom of Mr.
Thomas Idle did Despondency now hold
her gloomy state. He kept it a secret; but
he would have given a very handsome sum,
when the ascent began, to have been back
again at the inn. The sides of Carrock
looked fearfully steep, and the top of Carrock
was hidden in mist. The rain was falling
faster and faster. The knees of Mr. Idle—
always weak on walking excursions—shivered
and shook with fear and damp. The wet
was already penetrating through the young
man's outer coat to a bran new shooting-
jacket, for which he had reluctantly paid the
large sum of two guineas on leaving town;
he had no stimulating refreshment about him
but a small packet of clammy gingerbread
nuts; he had nobody to give him an arm,
nobody to push him gently behind, nobody
to pull him up tenderly in front, nobody to
speak to who really felt the difficulties of the
ascent, the dampness of the rain, the denseness
of the mist, and the unutterable folly of
climbing, undriven, up any steep place in the
world, when there is level ground within reach
to walk on instead. Was it for this that Thomas
had left London? London, where there are nice
short walks in level public gardens,with benches
of repose set up at convenient distances for
weary travellers—London, where rugged
stone is humanely pounded into little lumps
for the road, and intelligently shaped into
smooth slabs for the pavement! No! it was
not for the laborious ascent of the crags of