no doubt, that he had better come in and assist her in the
cabbage-and-bacon duties of the repast, than lose his time and annoy the
family.

We must now draw the spectator from the above-mentioned objects to a
little piscatorial sportsman, who, apart from them, and in the retirement
of his own thoughts upon worms, ground-bait, and catgut, lends his aid,
together with a lively little amateur waterman, paddling about in a little
boat, selfishly built to hold none other than himself--a hill rising in
the middle ground, and two or three minor editions of the same towards the
distance, carefully dotted with trees, after the fashion of a ready-made
portable park from the toy _depot_ in the Lowther Arcade--two bee-hives, a
water-mill, some majestic smoke, something that looks like a skein of
thread thrown over a mountain, and the memorable chiaro-scuro, form the
interesting episodes of this glorious essay in the epic pastoral.

* * * * *


SYNCRETIC LITERATURE

_Observations on the Epic Poem of Giles Scroggins and Molly
Brown--resumed._

The fatal operation of the unavoidable, ever-impending, ruthless shears of
the stern controller of human destiny, and curtailer of human life--the
action by which

"Fate's scissors cut Giles Scroggins' thread,"