Touching Mr. Sawyer’s early history, I have collected but few particulars, not enjoying the advantage of that gentleman’s acquaintance till he had arrived at years of maturity. I gather, however, that he matriculated at Oxford, and was rusticated from that pleasant University for some breach of college discipline, sufficiently venial in itself, but imbued with a scarlet tinge in the eyes of the authorities. I have heard that he rode an Ayrshire bull across Peckwater in broad daylight, having previously attired himself in a red coat, with leathers, &c., complete, and clad the patient animal in a full suit of academicals. Also that he endeavoured to mollify his judges by apostrophising the partner of his trespass, in the words Horace puts into the mouth of Europa, “Si quis infamem mihi nunc juvencum;” and so on to the end of the stanza. As, although Mr. Sawyer’s fluency in all Saxon expletives is undeniable, I never heard him make use of any language but his own, I confess to my mind this story bears upon the face of it the stamp of improbability, and that perversion of the truth from which Oxonian annals are not entirely free. It is a good old fashion to commence a narrative by a personal description of its hero; such as you would see in the _Hue and Cry_, or the advertisements for that missing gentleman in the _Times_ who has never been found yet, and whose humble costume of half-boots, tweed trousers, and an olive surtout, with a bunch of keys and three-halfpence in the pockets, denotes neither affluence nor display. Upon this principle let me endeavour to bring before the mind’s eye of my readers the outward semblance of my worthy friend, John Standish Sawyer, a man of mark, forsooth, in his own parish, “and justice of peace in his county, simple though he stand here.” Mr. Sawyer is a well-built, able-bodied personage, standing five feet eight in the worsted stockings he usually affects, with a frame admirably calculated to resist fatigue, to perform feats of strength rather than agility, and to put on beef: the last tendency he keeps down with constant and severe exercise, so that the twelve stone which he swings into his saddle is seldom exceeded by a pound. “As long as I ride thirteen stone,” quoth Mr. Sawyer to his intimates after dinner, “no man alive can take the shine out of me over a country. Mason! Mason’s all very well for a _spurt_! but where is he at the end of two hours and forty minutes, through woodlands, in deep clay? Answer me that! and pass the bottle.”