were to sport in the sparkling stream, and woo us with speech and song, we would just tell them it was a very fine day but rather windy.

Rob Thwaites, who had joined us on coming out of morning school, and Toby looked rather puffed; for we have run these six miles in something like fifty minutes, from which is to be subtracted precisely the number of seconds that are required to drink a cup of coffee and cut a huge hunch of bread for breakfast. Gray and I are old hands, so Thwaites and Dick watch us preparing ourselves for the sport. We leisurely divest ourselves of cap, coat, (waistcoat and neckcloth had been left behind in a locker of course), shirt, flannel, and then begin at the other end, and doff shoes and stockings, till we stand, like pure gold, in bags. However, shoes go on again, while the fags take charge of the clothes, and put watches, knives and halfpence into their pockets; and we step slowly and carefully into the cold stream.

"What? got one already?" shouts Dick, as Gray sings out "look sharp, Jim! Here's one" and flings a writhing glistening trout high up on the bank, "that's quick work." In two or three minutes the line is formed, and steady work goes on: "Two, three, four; I have got half a dozen," says Toby, who has the honour of stringing them on the bank. "And I have not caught one" says Thwaites; "have you, Mecca?" "No!" says Dick, despondingly.

"What on earth are you after, Gray?" No answer; as indeed might be expected. Look at him! Full length on the stones, with the wavelets breaking on his ribs and neck; his head almost out of sight under the bank and the water, and his arm reaching into the very bowels of the earth! Still thrusting his arm in and in. Stay, here he comes-no! in again for a moment; till he backs, like a terrier, stern first out of a hole, and jumps up on one knee, with a splendid trout flapping alternately his nose and chin, held fast by the gills in the ἕρκος ὀδόντων, and another looking resigned to his fate in his hand. "Bravo! Gray; you are a stumper!" "Yes; that is a pretty "considerable bite," says Gray, as he pitches them on to the bank; "how many have you caught?" Only two,"

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I reply, "but one is a splendid fish; caught him under the great Troutstone by the wooden bridge."

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We have no time to look about us, or we are now in glorious country: magnificent heath hills (with such grouse) in the back ground, and a blue sky with light clouds

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driving high before a south wind behind them, and broken high banks in front, with furze, and fern, and foxglove rising from the green strip which flanks the brook; and a few trees to the left, where a decent looking farm-house attracts our attention for a moment: to the right is an open bit of grass land with an old horse, and a steep earth bank with furze at the top about thirty yards off. Whiz! "who "on earth flung that stone?" "Mind your eye! there comes "another;" and sure enough one comes rising from behind the aforesaid hedge, and plunges into the river close by Dick's head. "I say, come on," cries Dick, and we charge the hedge: Thwaites keeps the rear safe, and protects the fags; for he is a cautious party. We are over the hedge in half a second, and right among five great awkward cubs who look not a little astonished: and now mind your peepers, you Thebans, for Dick is a crusher. Two or three taps on the head are enough however, and four run off and discharge еπeа πтeρóeνтa, like the Parthians, in their flight: one young Samson remains. 'Now, young 'un! "were you throwing stones ?" "Hauns aff! or I'll knock "your face in two twos?" "Were you throwing stones, "young un?" says Dick again, "na! what's the use? ye're "braw laddies eneugh," replies Samson slowly: "ha' ye "taken many?" "Pretty average," says Gray; "so you "did'nt pelt us." "Na! I did'nt." "Well give us your "fist," says Dick, "you an't half a bad fellow after all;" and they shake hands as if each was trying to dislocate the other's shoulder; come to our sports after the cricket "match in May, and try a wrestle will you there are "prizes no end, and all free and fair." "I know," says Samson, "why, mun, I wrostled last Michaelmas with t' "little tight lad; Smith, they call him, that's gone south to "make a parson or some such of himself;" "By Jove! so you "did," cries Dick, "I'd forgotten you: you were in the last "couple with Smith to be sure, and precious hard work he "had with you:" "Na! na! he's a fine lad; a fine tight lad; "he'll throw everybody down south that gives him a chance; "but I'll come and try a fall with you." "All right," replies Dick, "and good luck to you:" so we jog back again, and Dick shews Thwaites the great red and white mark on his shoulders that young Palamon's fist made.

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We are now right up among the mountains in the shadow of Tawny Longback, and are filling up the third dozen. Thwaites has caught a couple, but crushed off the head of one against a stone. Dick has caught five, and

a miserable eel-a Tartar to catch with one's hands. "Here's "a grand one," murmurs Thwaites as he kneels, head on one side and pressed against the bank, and arms and hand groping among the roots of a sycamore tree that stood on the bank: "here's a grand one, if I can but get it. By "Jove-here he is a thumper; look out Toby!" and up mounts a fat old frog into the air, and splits on falling to mother earth. Gray laughs, and Toby laughs, and drops the fish to laugh, and we all laugh at Thwaites' disconsolate and disgusted face. "Better luck next time, "old fellow! But was'nt it a thumper, that's all?” and we bend down again.

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Suddenly there is a sound of voices, and just above, where a little path leads down the burnside and crosses on stepping-stones, three young lassies walk trippingly down, and laugh and chat quite unconscious of our presence. The first lassie suddenly sees Gray, and screams with a most becoming fright at such a white Indian. "Don't be alarmed," says Gray, we are not water rats," as he eyes the first maiden very tenderly, a pretty child who had seen some ten summers pass over her flaxen head; the bonnet hangs negligently behind upon a little scarlet cloak, and is perfectly charming. "These stones are not quite safe, so I shall carry "you across;" off she sets like a fawn, and off he runs after her; it is all in vain; she has not run ten steps up the bank before Gray has seized the laughing little flirt, and bears her off in triumph; and when he set her down on the opposite bank, he stoops down perhaps to whisper something, for she runs off, and declares he is a naughty boy, and she'll never go to school that way again; and stands at the top of the bank, and looks a real little beauty. The others resist all offers of Mecca and Thwaites; who, somehow, have not got the knack of doing that sort of thing like Gray.

We have gone up the beck now about five miles, hedges have disappeared, and we are in the region of stone walls; the water is tumbling over great stones, and in the dubs there are splendid dark trout, for this is one of the Black becks, a "winefaced water." Thwaites thinks four dozen is as many as we shall know what to do with, and that it is time to set off home; however we grapple the stream to its very fount, groping under the banks and the great smooth stones till our fingers are so cold as scarcely to tell a stone from a fish. Flop, flop-" there's a glorious one gone," cries Dick, "my fingers were so cold, but he's gone up "stream;" "here you are," shouts Gray, and scoops out on

to the bank the identical trout with his hand, just at the top of a small waterfall which the fish had barely cleared, "that's "great luck; you see it was staggered by the current."

Oh! the delight of feeling a flap at your fingers ends under a stone, and groping about delicately, very delicately, till you just feel his tail in the farthest corner, and follow up along his body till you can get no further for the stones, between which he has hidden his head like an ostrich. Be patient, my dear fellow! you are sure to have him; tickle gently and he will back out, all slippery and cold into your hand, then firmly grasp him till one finger is safe in his gill, and draw him out and pitch him to Toby on the bank, and then you have done what Meg Dods would say, "is the first step towards cooking trout."

However, it is a quarter to one o'clock, and we have seven miles to go over fell and field and road before two p.m. so we adonize on the bank, and dispose of a couple of dry biscuits and the contents of a flask of whiskey, after which Dick proposes a race home, which Thwaites thinks is no fun. It would be long to tell of our run,-Thwaites falls into the rear with Toby and Jim; Willy and Allan Gray, Dick, and I keep on ahead; and Dick and Willy alarm an old lady in her cottage by the side of the path, by a sudden request for a drink of water. The old lady brings a great bowl of buttermilk, watches Dick pour it down slippingly, and then eyes Gray. "Well! y'ar a fine pair!" Ay?" says he. "Are ye brithers?" "Yes," says Gray, "brither scholars." "Well! y'ar a fine pair! are ye twins?" "Pretty nearly," says Dick, laughing. "Well! Y'AR a fine pair!" so we pat her little granddaughter on the head, thank the old lady, and set off again.

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We have not run far when Dick suddenly begins to limp, and complains of lameness in his left foot. We are very sorry, and little Allan offers to stay with him and cut dinner, but Dick won't let him, and sits looking very melancholy on the bank, and picking primroses, till we are out of sight. On we trot, thinking what poor Dick will do with himself, when horsehoofs are heard close behind us, and up he comes, riding as hard as he can ride, without saddle or bridle, or anything but a rough branch which he brandishes in his hand, and which descends on Powney's flanks, whack! whack! and passes us triumphantly 'mid a volley of laughing abuse of him for a crafty fox. So Dick gets home in state, and we meet Powney walking back looking rather warm, at five minutes to two in the afternoon of Easter Monday, 1855.

PALEY'S MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
Book II.

I

Que mon nom soit flétri, pourvu que la France soit libre.

Danton.

HAD originally intended to commence this division of my subject by analysing, as fairly and completely as I could, the argument on Moral Obligation; that my readers might have clearly before them at the outset the results at which Paley arrived, and the steps by which he reached them: but, on attempting to do so, I found his treatment of the question so hopelessly confused, that I relinquished the attempt in despair and must content myself with faithfully setting forth what appears to me to be the general connection of the principles upon which he rests the practical portion of his system, and with referring the reader to the work itself to examine the accuracy of my summary.

These principles are as follows: The desire of gain or fear of loss is the only motive which can be sufficiently violent to make a man feel obliged to do one action rather than another. The motive then of every action, good or bad, is private happiness; the distinguishing characteristic of a right action being that it is consistent with the Will of God. Hence private happiness is the motive to all right doing, the Will of God the rule; and Virtue, or the habit of acting rightly, is the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the Will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness. Further, since God wills and wishes the happiness of his creatures, the method of determining his Will concerning any action is to inquire into its tendency to promote or diminish the general happiness; in other words, actions are to be estimated by their tendency: it is expediency alone that constitutes moral obligation. To calculate this tendency with respect to each action would however be impossible, and on closer examination will be found not necessary; for whatever