Previous to leaving Hassness the next morning, Mr. Sandboys summoned the whole of his family together into the dining-room, and addressed them in a cheerful though solemn manner, saying he regretted to see that, under their late trials, they had evinced an unphilosophical want of vivacity, which he considered to be utterly unworthy of the hardy natives of Cumberland. He wished it, therefore, to be distinctly understood, that he accompanied them to London upon a single condition only, and that was—that they one and all made up their minds, come what might, to enjoy themselves. How the Sandboys got to Town—the misadventures that happened to them on the road—the difficulties that the family experienced in obtaining shelter when they reached the metropolis—how they were glad to accept of any wretched hole to lay their heads in for the night; and when they _did_ obtain a bed, the trouble that Mr. and Mrs. Sandboys found in their endeavours to get their two selves fairly into it—the dire calamity that befel them while reposing in it, and how excessively hard they found it under these, and many other circumstances, to carry out the principle of enjoying themselves,—all this, and much more, remains to be told in the succeeding chapters of this eventful history. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IV. “Han’ me that peype, weyfe! I’ll smuik an’ think. Nay, dunnet cry, we ne’er did wrang; The truth I’ll state, whate’er teks pleace, To Carel sizes when I gang; We plenty hev, we’ll dui what’s reeght, weyfe, An’ whop (hope) beath lang may happy be. Now supper’s ruddy, weep nae mair, weyfe. Ay fain I’d see a smeyle frae thee.”—_Bad News._ MR. SANDBOYS prided himself on being a “bit of a philosopher.” His great weakness consisted in his imaginary strength of mind. In his college days at St. Bees he had been charmed with the classic chronicles of Grecian stoicism and Roman fortitude, and, ever since, had been endeavouring to talk himself, out of all feeling and affection, into the hero. To his great self-satisfaction, he now believed he could bear any stroke of Fate, however severe or unexpected, without so much as a wink of his “mind’s eye,” and he flattered himself that he had arrived at that much-to-be-desired state of insensibility which, would enable him, like a Buttermere Brutus, to hand his own son Jobby over to the Carlisle hangman with no more compunction—as he delighted to tell that young gentleman, much to his horror—than he would take one of his “lean sheep” to Lanthwaite Green Fair.