on the other side; a feat which I very unintentionally
imitated, in a humble degree, many years after, with an impunity my
carelessness certainly did not deserve.

Driving in a state of considerable mental preoccupation out of my
own gate one day at Lenox, in a very light one-horse "wagon" (as
such vehicles are there called), instead of turning my horse's head
either up or down the road, I let him go straight across it, to the
edge of a tolerably wide dry ditch, when, suddenly checking him, the
horse, who was a saddle-horse and a good leaper, drew himself
together, and took the ditch, with me in the carriage behind him,
and brought up against a fence, where there was just room for him to
turn round, which he immediately did, as if aware of his mistake,
and proceeded to leap back again, quite successfully without any
assistance of mine, I being too much amazed at the whole performance
to do anything but sit still and admire my horse's dexterity.

I have adverted to the still existing industry of "gentlemen of the
road," in speaking of Cranford in the days of the Earl of Berkeley,
who used to take pistols in the carriage when he went to London. On
one occasion, when he was riding, unattended but fortunately not
unarmed, over some part of Hounslow Heath, a highwayman rode up to
him, and, saluting him by name, said, "I know, my lord, you have
sworn never to give in to one of us; but now I mean to try if you're
as good as your word." "So I have, you rascal, but there are two of
you here," replied the earl. The robber, thrown off his guard,
looked round for the companion thus indicated, and Lord Berkeley
instantly shot him through the head; owing it to his ready presence
of mind that he escaped a similar fate at the hands of his
assailant.

My mother, I think, had the advantage of a slight personal
acquaintance with one of the very last of these Tyburn heroes. She
lived at one time, before her marriage, with her mother and sisters
and only brother, at a small country house beyond Finchley; to which
suburban, or indeed then almost entirely rural, retreat my father
and other young men of her acquaintance used occasionally to resort
for an afternoon's sport, in the present highly distinguished
diversion of pigeon-shooting. On one of these occasions some one of
her habitual guests broug