But there are minds no scenery can delight or awe. I remember, how, travelling by rail, one glorious morning in December, the trees all hoar with frost, and glittering against a sky blue as the turquoise, I met a Cockney gent, who condescendingly surveyed the scene, and said that “it reminded him of _Storr and Mortimers!_ The water was very like those plate-glass things, which were used to set off the silver, and the trees a good deal resembled the candelabra clustered above.” And he smiled as one who was pleased to approve the article which Nature humbly submitted to his inspection, and seemed, out of his overflowing goodness, to pat Creation's head. And now, seated upon the box, a “party” from Sheffield insulted that pure delicious atmosphere with very villainous “shag,” and talked as flippantly and without restraint, as though he were in the Chair at “The Cutler's Arms,” presiding over a Free-and-Easy. No sooner did he ascertain from the driver that the grand Highlands before us were known as “_The Twelve Pins_” than he desired the company to inform him, “what degree of relationship existed between them and the _Needles_ off the Isle of Wight?” a genealogical problem, which would have been received with a due and dignified silence, but for his own unrestrained applause and laughter. Then he favoured us with an enigma, “Why have them pins no _pints?_ Because they're principally composed of _quartz!_” His geology he had got from a guidebook, out of which he treated us to various extracts, appending commentaries of his own. “Miss Martineau says the hair 'ere” (of course he transplanted every h) “is very like breathing cream. Wonder whether the old gal meant cream of the valley, or milk-punch--ha! ha! ha!”
From this subject he passed very naturally to mountain dew, and the illegal manufacture of whiskey, shouting at the top of his voice, “I cannot help loving thee, _Still_;” and then singing, “_Still_, I love thee, _Still_, I love thee,”--“_Fare thee well_, and if for ever, Still, for ever fare thee well” (the music by Mr. Joseph Miller), until, happily for us, his pipe went out, and playfully wondering “how he should obtain a light, when all around was _matchless_,” he collapsed into a state of quiet suction, like a gold fish in a vase.