then a drab under-waistcoat
of thinner mould--then a linen-shirt, somewhat drabbish--then a
flannel-shirt, entirely so, and most odorous to the nostrils of the
members of the Red Tarn Club. All this must have taken a couple of days
at the least; so, supposing the majority of members assembled about
eight A.M. on the Sabbath morning, it must have been well on to twelve
o'clock on Monday night before the club could have comfortably sat down
to supper. During these two denuding days, we can well believe that the
President must have been hard put to it to keep the secretary,
treasurer, chaplain, and other office-bearers, ordinary and
extraordinary members, from giving a sly dig at Obadiah's face, so
tempting in the sallow hue and rank smell of first corruption. Dead
bodies keep well in frost; but the subject had in this case probably
fallen from a great height, had his bones broken to smash, his flesh
bruised and mangled. The President, therefore, we repeat it, even
although a raven of great age and authority, must have had inconceivable
difficulty in controlling the Club. The croak of
"Order!--order!--Chair!--chair!"--must have been frequent; and had the
office not been hereditary, the old gentleman would no doubt have thrown
it up, and declared the chair vacant. All obstacles and obstructions
having been by indefatigable activity removed, no attempt, we may well
believe, was made by the seneschal to place the guests according to
their rank, above or below the salt, and the party sat promiscuously
down to a late supper. Not a word was tittered during the first
half-hour, till a queer-looking mortal, who had spent several years of
his prime of birdhood at old Calgarth, and picked up a tolerable command
of the Westmoreland dialect by means of the Hamiltonian system,
exclaimed, "I'se weel nee brussen--there be's Mister Wudsworth--Ho, ho,
ho!" It was indeed the bard, benighted in the Excursion from Patterdale
to Jobson's Cherry-Tree; and the Red Tarn Club, afraid of having their
orgies put into blank verse, sailed away in floating fragments beneath
the moon and stars.

But over the doom of one true Lover of Nature let us shed a flood of
rueful tears; for at what tale shall mortal man weep, if not at the tale
of youthful genius and virtue shrouded suddenly in a winding-sheet
wreathed of snow by the pitiless tempest! Elate in the joy of solitude,
he hurried like a fast-travelling shadow into the silence of the frozen
mountains,