"No," said Mr Mawley, "not one--although Longfellow belongs more by rights to the water-cart line. The fact is," continued he, fairly started on his hobby, "that Pegasus, the charger of Mount Parnassus, is a most eccentric animal, who can be made to metamorphose himself so completely according to the skill and ability or weakness of his rider, that even Apollo would not recognise him sometimes! When backed by an intrepid spirit, like the grand heroic poets, Pegasus is the stately war-horse eager for the fray, and sniffing the battle from afar; or else, controlled by the nervous reins of genius like that of Shelley and Coleridge, he appears as the high-mettled racer, pure-blooded and finely-trained, who may win some great race, but is unfit for any ordinary work; or, again, when ridden by a Wordsworth, he plods along wearily, with lack-lustre eyes, dragging a heavy load, such as _The Excursion_, behind him!" What the curate might have said further was lost to his hearers. Just at this moment, on turning a bend of the river, the pretty little low- arched bridge that spans it in front of Richmond came in sight; seeing which, the children raised such a shout of joy in the bows of the gondola, that our conversation shunted into a fresh channel, while our teamster, urging his horse by a multitude of "gee wo's," into a brisk trot, tightened our tow-rope and led us up in fine style to our goal. A short distance from the landing-place under the bridge, we found the detachments that had gone by road, awaiting us. Joining company, we proceeded together to the park, and set about our picnic in the usual harum-scarum fashion, chasing truant children, losing one another, finding one another, making merry over the most dire mishaps, and enjoying the whole thing hugely--elders, juveniles, and all--from beginning to end. The vicar made a perfect boy of himself. With a charming gleefulness, he did the most outrageous things--at which Master Adolphus, aetat twelve, would have turned up his nose, as being much beneath his years and dignity. He said he did it only to amuse the children; but, he took such an active part in the games he instituted, that we declared that he joined in them for his own personal gratification. Monsieur Parole d'Honneur, too, who was the gayest of the gay, specially distinguished himself for his vaulting powers in a sport which he entitled in his broken English manner "ze leap of ze frog;" and, as for grave Doctor Batson, whom we all thought so formal and dignified in his professional tether, why, the way in which he "stuck in his twopenny," as the boys said, and "gave a `back,'" was a caution to the lookers-on!