by the promise of a wintry gleam to landward.

A god--if we may suppose one of the old careless Olympians seated there
on the cliff-top, nursing his knees--must have enjoyed the comedy of it,
and laughed to think that this pert beetle, edging its way along the
sand amid the eternal forces of nature, was here to take seizin of
them--yes, actually to take seizin and exact tribute. So indomitable a
fellow is Man, _improbus Homo_; and among men in his generation Captain
Oliver Vyell was Collector of Customs for the Port of Boston,
Massachusetts.


In fairness to Captain Vyell be it added that he--a young English blood,
bearing kinship with two or three of the great Whig families at home,
and sceptical as became a person of quality--was capable as any one of
relishing the comedy, had it been pointed out to him. With equal
readiness he would have scoffed at Man's pretensions in this world and
denied him any place at all in the next. Nevertheless on a planet the
folly of which might be taken for granted he claimed at least his share
of the reverence paid by fools to rank and wealth. He was travelling
this lonely coast on a tour of inspection, to visit and report upon a
site where His Majesty's advisers had some design to plant a fort; and a
fine ostentation coloured his progress here as through life. He had
brought his coach because it conveyed his claret and his _batterie de
cuisine_ (the seaside inns were detestable); but being young and
extravagantly healthy and, with all his faults, very much of a man, he
preferred to ride ahead on his saddle-horse and let his pomp follow him.

Six horses drew the coach, and to each pair of leaders rode a
postillion, while a black coachman guided the wheelers from the