V. PARNASSUS AND PLYNLIMMON 103

in business with their father, both clever and energetic, but both distinctly resolute-as indeed their parents desired- that they would be gentlemen first, salesmen second: a character much to be honoured and retained among us; nor in their case the least ambitious or affected: gentlemen they were,-born so, and more at home on the hills than in the counting-house, and withal attentive enough to their business. The house, nevertheless, did not become all that it might have been in less well-bred hands.

The two sons, one or other, often dined with us, and were more distinctly friends than most of our guests. Alexander had much of his father’s humour; Archibald, a fine, young, dark Highlander, was extremely delightful to me, and took some pains with me, for the sake of my love of Scott, telling me anything about fishing or deerstalking that I cared to listen to. For, even from the earliest days, I cared to listen to the adventures of other people, though I never coveted any for myself. I read all Captain Marryat’s novels, without ever wishing to go to sea; traversed the field of Waterloo¹ without the slightest inclination to be a soldier; went on ideal fishing with Izaak Walton without ever casting a fly; and knew Cooper’s Deerslayer and Pathfinder almost by heart,² without handling anything but a pop-gun, or having any paths to find beyond the solitudes of Gipsy-Hill. I used sometimes to tell myself stories of campaigns in which I was an ingenious general, or caverns in which I discovered veins of gold; but these were merely to fill vacancies of fancy, and had no reference whatever to things actual or feasible. I already disliked growing older,-never expected to be wiser, and formed no more plans for the future than a little black silkworm does in the middle of its first mulberry leaf.

¹ [In 1825: see next page.]

² [There is an appreciative reference to another book by Fenimore Cooper in Modern Painters, vol. i. (Vol. III. p. 569).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]