bursting forth in all quarters, gave him the ludicrous appearance of a gigantic schoolboy. His wrists, and large sinewy hands, both employed at the bridle of his hard-mouthed charger, were markedly visible; for it was the Corporal’s custom whenever he came into an obscure part of the road, carefully to take off, and prudently to pocket, a pair of scrupulously clean white leather gloves which smartened up his appearance prodigiously in passing through the towns in their route. His breeches were of yellow buckskin, and ineffably tight; his stockings were of grey worsted, and a pair of laced boots, that reached the ascent of a very mountainous calf, but declined any farther progress, completed his attire. Fancy then this figure, seated with laborious and unswerving perpendicularity on a demi-pique saddle, ornamented with a huge pair of well-stuffed saddle-bags, and holsters revealing the stocks of a brace of immense pistols, the horse with its obstinate mouth thrust out, and the bridle drawn as tight as a bowstring! its ears laid sullenly down, as if, like the Corporal, it complained of going to Yorkshire, and its long thick tail, not set up in a comely and well-educated arch, but hanging sheepishly down, as if resolved that its buttocks should at least be better covered than its master’s! And now, reader, it is not our fault if you cannot form some conception of the physical perfections of the Corporal and his steed. The reverie of the contemplative Bunting was interrupted by the voice of his master calling upon him to approach. “Well, well!” muttered he, “the younker can’t expect one as close at his heels as if we were trotting into Lunnon, which we might be at this time, sure enough, if he had not been so damned flighty,--augh!” “Bunting, I say, do you hear?” “Yes, your honour, yes; this ere horse is so ‘nation sluggish.” “Sluggish! why I thought he was too much the reverse, Bunting? I thought he was one rather requiring the bridle than the spur.” “Augh! your honour, he’s slow when he should not, and fast when he should not; changes his mind from pure whim, or pure spite; new to the world, your honour, that’s all; a different thing if properly broke. There be a many like him!” “You mean to be personal, Mr. Bunting,” said Walter, laughing at the evident ill-humour of his attendant. “Augh! indeed and no!--I daren’t--a poor man like me--go for to presume to be parsonal,--unless I get hold of a poorer!” “Why, Bunting, you do not mean to say that you would be so ungenerous as to affront a man because he was poorer than you?--fie!” “Whaugh, your honour! and is not that the very reason why I’d affront him? surely it is not my betters I should affront; that would be ill bred, your honour,--quite want of discipline.” “But we owe it to our great Commander,” said Walter, “to love all men.” “Augh! Sir, that’s very good maxim,--none better--but shows ignorance of the world, Sir--great!”