g ancient as well as modern in the
wonderment it causes, that would make the Law courts bless their hearts,
judges no less than the barristers, to have it running through them day
by day, with every particular to wrangle over, and many to serve as a
text for the pulpit. So to proceed.

It should be mentioned that the postillion Charles Dump is not
represented, and I have no conception of the reason why not, sitting on
horseback, in the portrait in the possession of the Cawthorne family. I
have not seen it, I am bound to admit. We had offended Dr. Cawthorne, by
once in an urgent case calling in another doctor, who, he would have it,
was a quack, that ought to have killed us, and we ceased to visit; but
a gentleman who was an established patient of Dr. Cawthorne's and had
frequent opportunities of judging the portrait, in the course of a
chronic malady, describes Charles Dump on his legs as a small man
looking diminished from a very much longer one by shrinkage in thickish
wrinkles from the shoulders to the shanks. His hat is enormous and very
gay. He is rather of sad countenance. An elevation of his collar behind
the ears, and pointed at the neck, gives you notions of his having
dropped from some hook. He stands with his forefinger extended, like a
disused semaphore-post, that seems tumbling and desponding on the hill
by the highroad, in his attitude while telling the tale; if standing it
may be called, where the whole figure appears imploring for a seat.
That was his natural position, as one would suppose any artist must have
thought, and a horse beneath him. But it has been suggested that the
artist in question was no painter of animals. Then why did he not get a
painter of animals to put in the horse? It is vain to ask, though it is
notorious that artists combine without bickering to do these things;
and one puts his name on the animal, the other on the human being or
landscape.

My informant adds, that the prominent feature, telling a melancholy
tale of its own, is of sanguine colour, and while plainly in the act of
speaking, Charles Dump might be fancied about to drop off to sleep. He
was impressed by the dreaminess of the face; and I must say I regard him
as an interesting character. During my girlhood Napoleon Bonaparte alone
would have been his rival for filling an inn along our roads. I have
known our boys go to bed obediently and get up at night to run three
miles to THE WHEATSHEAF, only to stand on the bench