these, which ran along one side of the house, extended to a little bridge
traversed by the gates of entrance. The central gate admitted carriages:
on each side of this was a smaller gate for foot passengers; and, in a
family containing so many as six children, it may be supposed that often
enough one or other of the gates was open; which, most fortunately, on
this day was not the case. Along the margin of this side lawn ran a
little brook, which had been raised to a uniform level, and kept up by
means of a wear at the point where it quitted the premises; after which
it resumed its natural character of wildness, as it trotted on to the
little hamlet of Greenhill. This brook my brother was at one time
disposed to treat as Remus treated the infant walls of Rome; but, on
maturer thoughts, having built a fleet of rafts, he treated it more
respectfully; and this morning, as will be seen, the breadth of the
little brook did us "yeoman's service." Me at one time he had meant to
put on board this fleet, as his man Friday; and I had a fair prospect of
first entering life in the respectable character of supercargo. But it
happened that the current carried his rafts and himself over the wear;
which, he assured us, was no accident, but a lesson by way of practice in
the art of contending with the rapids of the St. Lawrence and other
Canadian streams. However, as the danger had been considerable, he was
prohibited from trying such experiments with me. On the centre of the
lawn stood my eldest surviving sister, Mary, and my brother William.
Round _him_, attracted (as ever) by his inexhaustible opulence of thought
and fun, stood, laughing and dancing, my youngest sister, a second Jane,
and my youngest brother Henry, a posthumous child, feeble, and in his
nurse's arms, but on this morning showing signs of unusual animation and
of sympathy with the glorious promise of the young June day. Whirling
round on his heel, at a little distance, and utterly abstracted from all
around him, my next brother, Richard, he that had caused so much
affliction by his incorrigible morals to the Sultan Amurath, pursued his