even _that_ has an
air of sedition, but not _beat_ us. This would have been treason; and for
its own sake I am glad that the Tallyho was disappointed." So dissatisfied
did the Welshman seem with this opinion, that at last I was obliged to tell
him a very fine story from one of our elder dramatists, viz.--that once, in
some oriental region, when the prince of all the land, with his splendid
court, were flying their falcons, a hawk suddenly flew at a majestic eagle;
and in defiance of the eagle's prodigious advantages, in sight also of all
the astonished field sportsmen, spectators, and followers, killed him on
the spot. The prince was struck with amazement at the unequal contest, and
with burning admiration for its unparalleled result. He commanded that the
hawk should be brought before him; caressed the bird with enthusiasm, and
ordered that, for the commemoration of his matchless courage, a crown
of gold should be solemnly placed on the hawk's head; but then that,
immediately after this coronation, the bird should be led off to execution,
as the most valiant indeed of traitors, but not the less a traitor that had
dared to rise in rebellion against his liege lord the eagle. "Now," said I
to the Welshman, "How painful it would have been to you and me as men of
refined feelings, that this poor brute, the Tallyho, in the impossible case
of a victory over us, should have been crowned with jewellery, gold, with
Birmingham ware, or paste diamonds, and then led off to instant execution."
The Welshman doubted if that could be warranted by law. And when I hinted
at the 10th of Edward III., chap. 15, for regulating the precedency of
coaches, as being probably the statute relied on for the capital punishment
of such offences, he replied drily--that if the attempt to pass a mail was
really treasonable, it was a pity that the Tallyho appeared to have so
imperfect an acquaintance with law.

These were among the gaieties of my earliest and boyish acquaintance with
mails. But alike the gayest and the most terrific of my experiences rose
again after years of slumber, armed with preternatural power to shake my
dreaming sensibilities; sometimes, as in the slight case of Miss Fanny on
the Bath road, (which I will immediately mention,) through some casual or
capricious association with images originally gay, yet opening at some
stage of evolution into sudden capacities of horror; sometimes through the
more natural and fixed alliances with the