kind of reception which his own poetry had
met with from the present age. The truth is,
that had Mr. Wordsworth known, when he in-
dited these luckless and helpless sentences,
that his own poetry was, in the best sense of
the word, a thousand times more popular than
he supposed it to be-and, Heaven be praised,
for the honour of the age, it was and is so!-
never had they been written, nor had he here
and elsewhere laboured to prove, that in pro-
portion as poetry is bad, or rather as it is no
poetry at all, is it, has been, and always will
be, more and more popular in the age con-
temporary with the writer. That Thomson,
in the Seasons, sometimes writes a vicious style,
may be true, but it is not true that he often
does so.
His style has its faults, no doubt, and
some of them inextricably interwoven with
the web of his composition. It is a dangerous
style to imitate-especially to dunces. But
its virtue is divine; and that divine virtue, even
in this low world of ours, wins admiration
more surely and widely than earthly vice-be it
in words, thoughts, feelings, or actions-is a
creed that we will not relinquish at the beck
or bidding even of the great author of the
"Excursion."

Thomson had not the philosophical genius of Wordsworth, but he had a warm human heart, and its generous feelings overflow all his poem. These are not the most poetical parts of the "Seasons" certainly, where such effusions prevail; but still, so far from being either vicious or worthless, they have often a virtue and a worth that must be felt by all the children of men. There is something not very credible in the situation of the parties in the story of the "lovely young Lavinia," for example, and much of the sentiment is commonplace enough; but will Mr. Wordsworth say-in support of his theory, that the worst poetry is always at first (and at last too, it would seem, from the pleasure with which that tale is still read by all simple minds) the most popular-that that story is a bad one? It is a very beautiful one.

Mr. Wordsworth, in all his argumentation, is so blinded by his determination to see every thing in but one light, and that a most mistaken one, that he is insensible to the conclusion to which it all leads, or rather, which is involved in it. Why, according to him, even now, when people have not only learned the "art of seeing”—a blessing for which they can never be too thankful-but when descriptive That many did-do-and will admire the bad poetry has long flourished far beyond its palmior indifferent passages in the Seasons-won by est state in any other era of our literature, still their false glitter or commonplace sentimental- are we poor common mortals who admire the ism, is no doubt true: but the delight, though"Seasons," just as deaf and blind now, or as intense as perhaps it may be foolish, with nearly so, to their real merits—allowed to be which boys and virgins, woman-mantua-ma- transcendent-as our unhappy forefathers were kers and man-milliners, and "the rest," peruse when that poem first appeared, "a glorious the Rhapsody on Love-one passage of which apparition." The Rhapsody on Love, and Dawe ventured to be facetious on in our Solilo-mon and Musidora, are still, according to him, quy on the Seasons-and hang over the pic- its chief attraction-its false ornaments—and ture of Musidora undressing, while Damon its sentimental commonplaces-such as those, watches the process of disrobement, panting we presume, on the benefits of early rising, behind a tree, will never account for the admi- and, ration with which the whole world hailed the "Oh! little think the gay licentious proud!" "Winter," the first published of the "Sea- What a nest of ninnies must people in genesons:" during which, Thomson had not the bar-ral be in Mr. Wordsworth's eyes! And is the barity to plunge any young lady naked into the "Excursion" not to be placed by the side of cold bath, nor the ignorance to represent, dur- “Paradise Lost," till the Millennium? ing such cold weather, any young lady turning her lover sick by the ardour of her looks, and the vehemence of her whole enamoured deportment. The time never was-nor could have been-when such passages were generally esteemed the glory of the poem. Indeed, independently of its own gross absurdity, the assertion is at total variance with that other assertion, equally absurd, that people admired most in the poem what they least understood; for the Rhapsody on Love is certainly very intelligible, nor does there seem much mystery in Musidora going into the water to wash and cool herself on a hot day. Is it not melancholy, then, to hear such a man as Mr. Wordsworth, earnestly, and even somewhat angrily, trying to prove that "these are the parts of the work which, after all, were probably most efficient in first recommending the author to general notice?"

Such is the reasoning (!) of one of the first of our English poets, against not only the people of Britain, but mankind. One other sentence there is which we had forgotten-butnow remember-which is to help us to distinguish, in the case of the reception the "Seasons' met with, between "wonder and legitimate admiration!" "The subject of the work is the changes produced in the appearances of nature by the revolution of the year; and, undertaking to write in verse, Thomson pledged himself to treat his subject as became a poet!" How original and profound! Thomson redeemed his pledge; and that great pawnbroker, the public, returned to him his poem at the end of a year and a day. Now what is the "mighty stream of tendency" of that remark? Were the public, or the people, or the world, gulled by this unheard-of pledge of Thomson, to regard his work with that "wonder which is the natural product of ignorance!" If they were so in his case, why not in every other? All poets pledge themselves to be poetical, but too many of them are wretchedly prosaic-die and are buried, or, what is worse, protract a miserable existence, in spite of their sentimental

commonplaces, false ornaments, and a vicious | all look up to her loveful blue or wrathful style. But Thomson, in spite of all these, black skies, with a weather-wisdom that keeps leapt at once into a glorious life, and a still growing from the cradle to the grave. Say not more glorious immortality. that 'tis alone

There is no mystery in the matter. Thomson-a great poet-poured his genius over a subject of universal interest; and the "Seasons" from that hour to this-then, now, and for ever-have been, are, and will be loved, and admired by all the world. All over Scotland "The Seasons" is a household-book. Let the taste and feeling shown by the Collectors of Elegant Extracts be poor as possible; yet Thomson's countrymen, high and low, rich and poor, have all along not only gloried in his illustrious fame, but have made a very manual of his great work. It lies in many thousand cottages. We have ourselves seen it in the shepherd's shieling, and in the woodman's bower-small, yellow-leaved, tatter'd, mean, miserable, calf-skin-bound, smoked, stinking copies-let us not fear to utter the word, ugly but true-yet perused, pored, and pondered over by those humble dwellers, by the winter ingle or on the summer brae, perhaps with as enlightened-certainly with as imaginationovermastering a delight as ever enchained the spirits of the high-born and highly-taught to their splendid copies lying on richly carved tables, and bound in crimson silk or velvet, in which the genius of painting strives to imbody that of poetry, and the printer's art to lends its beauty to the very shape of the words in which the bard's immortal spirit is enshrined. "The art of seeing" has flourished for many centuries in Scotland. Men, women, and children,

"The poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind

Sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind!"

In scriptural language, loftier even than that,
the same imagery is applied to the sights seen
by the true believer. Who is it "that maketh
the clouds his chariot?" The Scottish pea-
santry-Highland and Lowland-look much
and often on nature thus; and they live in the
heart of the knowledge and of the religion of
nature. Therefore do they love Thomson as
an inspired bard-only a little lower than the
Prophets. In like manner have the people of
Scotland-from time immemorial-enjoyed the
use of their ears. Even persons somewhat
hard of hearing, are not deaf to her waterfalls.
In the sublime invocation to Winter, which we
have quoted—we hear Thomson recording his
own worship of nature in his boyish days,
when he roamed among the hills of his father's
parish, far away from the manse. In those
strange and stormy delights did not thousands
of thousands of the Scottish boyhood familiarly
Of all that
live among the mists and snows?
number he alone had the genius to "here
eternize on earth" his joy-but many millions
have had souls to join religiously in the hymns
he chanted. Yea, his native land, with one
mighty voice, has for upwards of a century
responded,

"These, as they change, Almighty Father, these
Are but the varied God!"

THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT.

circled in a halo of spray, seemed instinct with spirit to obey, along all its flight, the voice of him that launched it on its unerring aim, and sometimes, in spite of his awkward skillessness, when the fate of the game hung on his own single crank, went cannonading through all obstacles, till it fell asleep, like a beauty as it was, just as it kissed the Tee!

BEAUTIFUL as Snow yet is to our eyes, even | startle the moon and stars-those in the sky, through our spectacles, how gray it looks be- as well as those below the ice-till again the side that which used to come with the long tumult subsided-and all the host of heaven winters that glorified the earth in our youth, above and beneath became serene as a world till the white lustre was more delightful even of dreams. Is it not even so, Shepherd? What than the green-and we prayed that the fine is a rink now on a pond in Duddingstone fleecy flakes might never cease falling waver-policy, to the rinks that rang and roared of old ingly from the veil of the sky! No sooner on the Loch o' the Lowes, when every stone, comes the winter now, than it is away again to one of the Poles. Then, it was a year in itself a whole life. We remember slides a quarter of a mile long, on level meadows; and some not less steep, down the sides of hills that to us were mountains. No boy can slide on one leg now-not a single shoe seems to have sparables. The florid style of skating shows that that fine art is degenerating; and we look in vain for the grand simplicity of the masters that spread-eagled in the age of its perfection. A change has come over the spirit of the curlers' dream. They seem to our ears indeed to have "quat their roaring play." The cry of "swoop-swoop" is heard still-but a faint, feeble, and unimpassioned cry, compared with that which used, on the Mearns Brother-Loch, to make the welkin ring, and for a moment to

Again we see-again we sit in the Snow house, built by us boys out of a drift in the minister's glebe, a drift-judging by the steeple, which was sixty-about twenty feet high-and purer than any marble. The roof was all strewed with diamonds, which frost saved from the sun. The porch of the palace was pillared

and the character of the building outside was, without any serv le imitation-for we worked in the glow of original genius, and

none of us had then ever seen itself or its pic- and is poor pussy in view before the whole ture-wonderfully like the Parthenon. Enter- murderous pack, opening in full cry on her ing, you found yourself in a superb hall, lighted up-not with gas, for up to that era gas had not been used except in Pandemoniumbut with a vast multitude of farthing candles, each in a turnip stuck into the wall-while a chandelier of frozen snow-branches pendent from the roof set that presence-chamber in a blaze. On a throne at the upper end sat young Christopher North-then the king of boys, as now of men-and proud were his subjects to do him homage. In niches all around the side-walls were couches covered with hare, rabbit, foumart, and fox's skins-furnished by these animals slain by us in the woods and among the rocks of that silvan and moorland parish-the regal Torus alone being spread with the dun-deer's hide from Lochiel Forest in Lochaber. Then old airs were sung-in sweet single voice-or in full chorus that startled the wandering night traveller on his way to the lone Kingswell; and then, in the intermediate hush, old tales were told "of goblin, ghost, or fairy," or of Wallace Wight at the Barns of Ayr or the Brigg o' Stirlingor, a glorious outlaw, harbouring in caves among the Cartlane Craigs-or of Robert Bruce the Deliverer, on his shelty cleaving in twain the skull of Bohun the English knight, on his thundering war-steed, armed cap-a-pie, while the King of Scotland had nothing on his unconquered head but his plain golden crown. Tales of the Snow-house! Had we but the genius to recall you to life in undying song!

haunches? Why-Imagination, thou art an ass, and thy long ears at all times greedy of deception! "Tis but the country Schoolhouse pouring forth its long-imprisoned stream of life as in a sudden sunny thaw, the Mad Master flying in the van. of his helter-skelter scholars, and the whole yelling mass precipitated, many of them headlong, among the snow. Well do we know the fire-eyed Poet-pedagogue, who, more outrageous than Apollo, has "ravished all the Nine." Ode, elegy, epic, tragedy, or farce-all come alike to him; and of all the bards we have ever known-and the sum-total cannot be under a thousand-he alone, judging from the cock and the squint of his eye, labours under the blessing or the curse-we wot not whilk it be-of perpetual inspiration. A rare eye, too, is his at the setting of a spring for woodcocks, or tracking a mawkin on the snow. Not a daredevil in the school that durst follow the indentations of his toes and fingers up the wall of the old castle, to the holes just below the battlements, to thrust his arm up to the elbows harrying the starlings' nests. The corbies ken the shape of his shoulders, as craftily he threads the wood; and let them build their domicil as high as the swinging twigs will bear its weight, agile as squir rel, and as foumart ferocious, up speels, by the height undizzied, the dreadless Dominie; and should there be fledged or puddock-haired young ones among the wool, whirling with guttural cawings down a hundred feet descent, on the hard rooty ground-floor from which springs pine, oak, or ash, driven out is the life, with a squelsh and a squash, from the worthless carrion. At swimming we should not boggle to back him for the trifle of a cool hundred against the best survivor among these waterserpents, Mr. Turner, Dr. Bedale, Lieutenant Ekenhead, Lord Byron, Leander, and Ourselves-while, with the steel shiners on his soles, into what a set of ninnies in their ring would he not reduce the Edinburgh Skating Club?

Nor was our frozen hall at all times uncheered by the smiles of beauty. With those smiles was heard the harmless love-whisper, and the harmless kiss of love; for the cottages poured forth their little lasses in flower-like bands, nor did their parents fear to trust them in the fairy frozen palace, where Christopher was king. Sometimes the old people themselves came to see the wonders of the lamp, and on a snowtable stood a huge bowl-not of snow-steaming with nectar that made Hyems smile as he hung his beard over the fragrant vapour. Nay, the minister himself with his mother and Saw ye ever a Snowball Bicker? Never? sister-was with us in our fantastic festivities, Then look there with all the eyes in your head and gave to the architecture of our palace his-only beware of a bash on the bridge of your wondering_praise. Then Andrew Lindsey, the blind Paisley musician, a Latin scholar, who knew where Cremona stood, struck up on his famous fiddle jig or strathspey-and the swept floor, in a moment, was alive with a confused flight of foursome reels, each begun and ended with kisses, and maddened by many a whoop and yell-so like savages were we in our glee, dancing at the marriage of some island king!

Countless years have fled since that Snowpalace melted away-and of all who danced there, how many are now alive! Pshaw! as many probably as then danced anywhere else. It would never do to live for ever-let us then live well and wisely; and when death comes -from that sleep how blessed to awake! in a region where is no frost-no snow-but the sun of eternal life!

Mercy on us! what a hubbub!-can the harriers be hunting in such a snow-fall as this,

nose, a bash that shall die the snow with your virgin blood. The Poet-pedagogue, alias the Mad Dominie, with Bob Howie as his Second in Command, has chosen the Six stoutest striplings for his troop, and, at the head of that Sacred Band, offers battle to Us at the head of the whole School. Nor does that formidable force decline the combat. War levels all foolish distinctions of scholarship. Booby is Dux now, and Dux Booby-and the obscure dunce is changed into an illustrious hero.

"The combat deepens-on, ye brave, Who rush to glory or the grave! Wave, Nitton, all thy banners wave, And charge with all thy schoolery!" Down from the mount on which it had been drawn up in battle-array, in solid-square comes the School army, with shouts that might waken the dead, and inspire with the breath of life the nostrils of the great Snow-giant built up at the end of yonder avenue, and indurated by

last night's frost. But there lies a fresh fall-overthrow! Heavens and earth! sixty are and a better day for a Bicker never rose flakily flying before Six!—and half of sixty-oh! that from the yellow East. Far out of distance, we should record it !—are pretending to be dead!! and prodigal of powder lying three feet deep on Would indeed that the snow were their windthe flats, and heaped up in drifts to tree and ing-sheet, so that it might but hide our dischimney-top, the tirailleurs, flung out in front, honour! commence the conflict by a shower of balls that, from the bosom of the yet untrodden snow between the two battles, makes spin like spray the shining surface. Then falling back on the main body, they find their places in the front rank, and the whole mottled mass, gray, blue, and scarlet, moves onwards o'er the whiteness, a moment ere they close,

"Calm as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm!" "Let fly," cries a clear voice-and the snowball-storm hurtles through the sky. Just then

the valley-mouth blew sleety in the faces of the foe their eyes, as if darkened with snuff or salt, blinked bat-like-and with erring aim flew their feckless return to that shower of frosty fire. Incessant is the silent cannonade of the resistless School-silent but when shouts proclaim the fall or flight of some doughty champion in the adverse legion.

See-see-the Sacred Band are broken! The cravens taken ignominiously to flight-and the Mad Domine and Bob Howie alone are

left to bear the brunt of battle. A dreadful
brotherhood! But the bashing balls are show
ered upon them right and left from scores of
catapultic arms-and the day is going sore
against them, though they fight less like men
than devils. Hurra! the Dominie's down, and
Bob staggers. "Guards, up and at them!"
"A simultaneous charge of cocks, hens, and
yearocks!" No sooner said than done. Bob
Howie is buried-and the whole School is
trampling on its Master!

"Oh, for a blast of that dread horn,
On Fontarabian echoes borne,

That to King Charles did come,
When Rowland brave and Olivier,
And every paladin and peer,

On Roncesvalles died!"

The smothered ban of Bob, and the stifled denunciations of the Dominie, have echoed o'er the hill, and,

"Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,"

Look, we beseech you, at the Mad Dominie! like Hector issuing from the gates of Troy, and driving back the Greeks to their ships; or rather-hear, spirit of Homer!-like some great shaggy, outlandish wolf-dog, that hath swum ashore from some strange wreck, and, after a fortnight's famine on the bare seacliffs, been driven by the hunger that gnaws his stomach like a cancer, and the thirst-fever that can only be slaked in blood, to venture

prowling for prey up the vale, till, snuffing the

scent of a flock of sheep, after some grim tiger-like creeping on his belly, he springs at last, with huge long spangs, on the woolly people, with bull-like growlings quailing their poor harmless hearts, and then fast throttling them, one after another-till, as it might seem rather in wantonness of rage than in empty pangs, he lies down at last in the midst of all the murdered carcasses, licking the blood off his flews and paws-and then, looking and listening round with his red turbid eyes, and of crime and fearful of punishment, soon as sharp-pointed ears savagely erect, conscious he sees and hears that all the coast is clear and still, again gloatingly fastens his tusks behind the ears, and then eats into the kidneys of the fattest of the flock, till, sated with gore and tallow, he sneaks stealthily into the wood, and coiling himself up all his wiry length— now no longer lank, but swollen and knotted like that of a deer-devouring snake-he falls suddenly asleep, and re-banquets in a dream of murder.

That simile was conceived in the spirit of Dan Homer, but delivered in that of Kit North. No matter. Like two such wolf-dogs are now Bob Howie and the Mad Dominie-and the School like such silly sheep. Those other helldogs are leaping in the rear-and to the eyes of fear and flight each one of the Six seems more many-headed than Cerberus, while their mouths kindle the frosty air into fire, and thun

the runaways, shaking the snows of panic derbolts pursue the pell-mell of the panic. from their pows,

Such and so imaginative is not only mental but corporal fear. What though it be but a "Like dewdrops from the lion's mane," Snowball bicker! The air is darkened-no, come rushing to the rescue. Two of the Six brightened by the balls, as in many a curve tremble and turn. The high heroic scorn of they describe their airy flight-some hard as their former selves urges four to renew the stones-some soft as slush-some blae and charge, and the sound of their feet on the snow drippy in the cold-hot hand that launches them is like that of an earthquake. What bashes on the flying foe, and these are the teazerson bloody noses! What bungings-up of eyes! some almost transparent in the cerulean sky, Of lips what slittings! Red is many a spittle! and broken ere they reach their aim, abortive And as the coughing urchin groans, and claps" armamentaria cœli"-and some useless from his hand to his mouth, distained is the snow- the first, and felt, as they leave the palm, to be ball that drops unlaunched at his feet! The fozier than the foziest turnip, and unfit to bash School are broken-their hearts die within them-and-can we trust our blasted eyes?— the white livers show the white feather, and fly! O shame! O sorrow! O sin! they turn their backs and fly! Disgraced are the mothers that bore them-and “happy in my mind," wives and widows, "were ye that died," undoomed to hear the tidings of this wretched

a fly.

Far and wide, over hill, bank, and brae, are spread the flying School! Squads of us, at sore sixes and sevens, are making for the frozen woods. Alas! poor covert now in their naked leaflessness for the stricken deer! Twos and threes, in miserable plight floundering in drift-wreaths! And here and there-wofulest

sight of all-single boys distractedly ettling at the sanctuaries of distant houses-with their heads all the while insanely twisted back over their shoulders, and the glare of their eyes fixed frightfully on the swift-footed Mad Dominie, till souse over neck and ears, bubble and squeak, precipitated into traitorous pitfall, and in a moment evanished from this upper world! Disturbed crows fly away a short distance and alight silent-the magpies chatter pert even in alarm-the lean kine, collected on the lown sides of braes, wonder at the rippettheir horns moving, but not their tails-while the tempest-tamed bull-almost dull now as an ox-gives a short sullen growl as he feebly paws the snow.

But who is he-the tall slender boy-slender, but sinewy-a wiry chap-five feet eight on his stocking-soles-and on his stocking-soles he stands for the snow has sucked his shoes from his feet-that plants himself like an oak sapling, rooted ankle-deep on a knoll, and there, a juvenile Jupiter Stator, with voice and arm arrests the Flight, and fiercely gesticulating vengeance on the insolent foe, recalls and rallies the shattered School, that he may relead them to victory? The phantom of a visionary dream! KIT NORTH HIMSELF

"In life's morning march when his spirit was young."
And once on a day was that figure-ours!
Then like a chamois-hunter of the Alps! Now,
alas! like-

"But be hush'd, my dark spirit-for wisdom condemns,
When the faint and the feeble deplore;
Be strong as a rock of the ocean that stems
A thousand wild waves on the shore.
Through the perils of chance and the scowl of disdain,
Let thy front be unalter'd, thy courage elate;
Yea! even the name we have worshipp'd in vain
Shall awake not a pang of remembrance again;
To bear, is to conquer our fate !"

bless him!-to guard us from scathe, would have risked his life against a whole crael of tinkers. With open arms they come forward to receive us; but our blood is up-and we are jealous of the honour of the School, which has received a stain which must be wiped out in blood. From what mixed motives act boys and men in the deeds deemed most heroic, and worthy of the meed of everlasting fame! Even so is it now with us-when sternly eyeing the other Six, and then respectfully the Mad Dominie, we challenge-not at long bowls-but toe to toe, at the scratch on the snow, with the naked mawlies, the brawny boy with the red shock-head, the villain with the carrots, who by moonlight nights,

"Round the stacks with the lasses at bogles to play," had dared to stand between us and the ladye of our love. Off fly our jackets and stocksit is not a day for buff-and at it like bull-dogs. Twice before had we fought him-at our own option-over the bonnet; for 'twas a sturdy villain, and famous for the cross-buttock. But now, after the first close, in which we lose the fall-with straight right-handers we keep him at off-fighting-and that was a gush of blood from his smeller. "How do you like that, Ben?" Giving his head, with a mad rush, he makes a plunge with his heavy left-for he was kerr-handed-at our stomach. But a dip of our right elbow caught the blow, to the loud admiration of Bob Howie-and even the Mad Dominie, the umpire, could not choose but smile. Like lightning, our left returns between the ogles-and Ben bites the snow. Three cheers from the School-and, lifted on the knee of his second, James Maxwell Wallace, since signalized at Waterloo, and now a knighted colonel of horse, "he grins horribly Half a century is annihilated as if it had never a ghastly smile," and is brought up staggering been: it is as if young Kit had become not old to the scratch. We know that we have him Kit but were standing now as then front to-and ask considerately, "what he means by front, with but a rood of trampled snow be- winking?" And now we play around him, tween them, before the Mad Dominie and Bob "Just like unto a trundling mop, Howie-both the bravest of the brave in Snowball or Stone bicker-in street, lane, or muir fight-hand to hand, single-pitched with Black King Carey of the Gipsies-or in irregular high-road row-two to twelve-with a gang of Irish horse-cowpers from the fair of Glasgow returning by Portpatrick to Donaghadee. "Tis a strange thing so distinctly to see One's Self as he looked of yore-to lose one's present frail personal identity in that of the powerful past. Or rather to admire One's Self as he without consciousness of the mean vice of egotism, because of the pity almost bordering on contempt with which One regards One's Self as he is, shrivelled up into a sort of shrimp of a man-or blown out into a flounder.

was,

The Snowball bicker owns an armisticeand Kit North-that is, we of the olden and the golden time-advance into the debatable ground between the two armies, with a frozen branch in our hand as a flag of truce. The Mad Dominie loved us, because then-a-daysbating and barring the cock and the squint of his eye-we were like himself a poet, and while a goose might continue standing on one leg, could have composed one jolly act of a tragedy, or book of an epic, while Bob-God

Or a wild-goose at play."

He is brought down now to our own weightthen nine stone jimp-his eyes are getting momently more and more piglike-water-logged, like those of Queen Bleary, whose stone image lies in the echoing aisle of the old abbey-church of Paisley-and bat-blind, he hits past our head and body, like an awkward hand at the flail, when drunk, thrashing corn. Another hit on the smeller, and a stinger on the throat-apple

and down he sinks like a poppy-deaf to the call of "time"-and victory smiles upon us from the bright blue skies. "Hurra-hurra— hurra! Christopher for ever!" and perched aloft, astride on the shoulders of Bob Howiehe, the Invincible, gallops with us all over the field, followed by the shouting School, exulting that Ben the Bully has at last met with an overthrow. We exact an oath that he will never again meddle with Meg Whitelawshake hands cordially, and

"Off to some other game we all together flew." And so ended the famous Snowball Bicker of Pedmount, now immortalized in our ProsePoem.

Some men, it is sarcastically said, are boys all life-long, and carry with them their puer