Mr Sydney Dawson, as the
cards on his multifarious luggage set forth: that he was an aspirant for
"any thing he could get" in the way of honours: (humble aspiration as it
seemed, it was not destined to be gratified, for he got nothing.) He
thought he might find some shooting and fishing in Wales, so had brought
with him a gun-case and a setter; though his pretensions to
sportsmanship proved to be rather of the cockney order. For three months
he was the happily unconscious butt of our party, and yet never but once
was our good-humour seriously interrupted.

From B---- to Glyndewi we had been told we must make our way as we
could: and a council of war, which included boots and the waiter, ended
in the arrival of the owner of one of the herring-boats, of which there
were several under "the terrace." "Was you wish to go to Glyndewi,
gentlemen? I shall take you so quick as any way; she is capital wind,
and you shall have fine sail." A man who could speak such undeniable
English was in himself a treasure; for an ineffectual attempt at a
bargain for some lobsters (even with a "Welsh interpreter" in our hands)
had warned us that there were in this Christian country unknown tongues
which would have puzzled even the Rev. Edward Irving. So the bargain was
struck: in half-an-hour ourselves and traps were alongside the boat: and
after waiting ten minutes for the embarkation of Mr Sydney Dawson and
his dog Sholto, who seemed to have an abhorrence of sea-voyages,
Branling at last hauled in the latter in the last agonies of
strangulation, and his master having tumbled in over him, to the
detriment of a pair of clean whites and a cerulean waistcoat, we--_i.e._
the rest of us--set sail for Glyndewi in high spirits.

Our boatmen were intelligent fellows, and very anxious to display their
little stock of English. They knew Mr Hanmer well, they said--he had
been at Glyndewi the summer before; he was "nice free gentleman;" and
they guessed immediately the object of our pilgrimage: Glyndewi was
"very much for learning;" did not gentlemen from Oxford College, and
gentlemen from Cambridge College, all come there? We warned him not on
any account to couple us in his mind with "Cambridge gentlemen:" we were
quite a distinct species, we assured him. (They had beaten us that year
in the eight-oar match on the Thames.) But there seemed no sufficient
reason for disabusing their minds of the notion, that this influx of
students was owing to something