what I actually saw during the last two years of his life. Through the vigour of his manhood he had been an industrious and able fisherman-was partowner of a boat and nets-could make a trip to the "other side" once in a season-board an Indiaman in the channel on a dark night, and "all that sort of thing,"-got married came to be a father, and lived prosperously; till time at length had his usual effects with Johnny as with all flesh; he grew old-was decided to be not sea-worthy-sold his share in the boat that he could no longer serve-turned shrimper and purveyor of periwinkles, till he could no longer stoop to pick them up-and so dwindled away, step by step-till he finally settled into a roamer, content to take his pittances from the bounty of that element, from which he at once gallantly forced, as it were, his subsistence-a poor pensioner of the waves-an humble dependent on the chance-medley of af jettsom and flottsom." He went on in this character without change, or wish for change, for many years; and at the period when I first became acquainted with him, and when he was seventy-two years old, he was still a simple roamer, relying on his own exertions for his subsistence, and for that of a wife about as old and crazy as himself. The first sight of him told you at once that he was no common man. You could not pass him on the beach like an every-day fish, I promise you. In his appearance were signs of age and decrepitude rather more marked than the years he had passed seemed to warrant: but Johnny had lived hard,"-in a very hard sense of the word. His face was hollow and grim-the eyes little better than blanks-dim-pale-deep-sunk in his head, and overthatched with a white bushy brow;-the nose long and sharp-and the jaws skeletonized, and grizzled over from cheek to throat with a stubbly beard an inch in length. His skin had not a tinge of red upon it, but, without any hue of sickliness, was mellowed by sun and wind, and age, into a fine Rembrandt tan, and furrowed, and puckered, and knotted, like the bark of an old tree. On this time worn and weather-beaten head, grew a very picturesque sort of hat, painted black and glazed, with a cupola top and a broad flapping brim, from beneath which dropped down a few lank locks of wiry hair. With all this ruggedness, there was an expression of extreme mildness and benevolence in his countenance every feature was roughened and disfigured by long suffering and exposure; but amongst all his marks of hard usage, there was not one of ill-humour or discontent. Of his person you might fairly declare that it was still entire: he had all his limbs about him, though in truth, his usufruct in them was singularly limited. Rheumatism, he used to say, had clapped him in irons all over; his joints were all double-locked, and would as little bend as his shin bones. But in losing his suppleness, he had fortunately hardened upright, and it was among his few vanities that, if no longer apt at a hornpipe, he was as stiff and straight as a Prussian grenadier. He wore a smock frock on his body, while his lower limbs were smothered in rags, so that he had not in the least the appearance of a creature of coat and breeches, but may have been said rather to have been bandaged than dressed. By various means, direct or indirect, he contrived at least to provide a sufficiency of covering to keep out the weather, and that done, his utmost pride on the score of dress was thoroughly satisfied. This rigid body, so confined and mummied will scarcely be thought properly appointed for walking, or any such violences. In fact, my old friend performed all his excursions on horseback, and he considered this means of loco-motion, that was still spared to him, as an ample compensation for all the losses and crosses with which he had to reproach the weather and the world. Keeping a horse," had not the same meaning with him as with ordinary riders. His horse was not a supernumerary servant, to be used one day and neglected another, as whim might suggest, but the main spring of his whole system-his staff of life--to have deprived him of it would have been to doom him to perpetual imprisonment, and shut him out from all the uses of the world. It was his legs his liberty-his every thing. How he supported this necessary creature I could never exactly ascertain. In the summer time it fed cheaply if not abundantly (it was neither glutton nor epicure, I answer for it) on the compound and spontaneous vegetation of hedges and ditches; and during the barrenness of winter, a little eleemosynary damaged hay, from one kind farmer or another, was sufficient, it was found, to keep off absolute famine: what farther provision there was, I am not, I confess, prepared to set forth. The horse, Bob-or "Old Bob," as he was most pertinently defined, was precisely the one I should have chosen for Johnny, for it was impossible to conceive any thing more happily in keeping with all his peculiarities. I never saw his exact parallel, yet I have no bad eye, as we say, for a horse. He was some sixteen years old when I had first the luck to see him, and, as far as looks were concerned, could not have been older had he lived sixteen centuries. Every bone in his body was anatomically defined, all his flesh appearing, as it were, to have been dragged from his sides, and to bag down in a vast tense pot-belly. His great lumping head bore about the same proportion to his straight, scraggy, neck, that a pump bears to its handle; and at his opposite extremity, bounding the spinal line of his sharp, knotty back, was another oddity quite as characteristical, in the shape of a tail, which stuck out horizontally, and consisted of about a foot of naked stump, fringed near the root with a scanty and irregular wisp of grizzly hair. He had been originally a black, but his coat, as black coats are wont, had apostatized into a Mulatto and, like all old coats too, betrayed every rent and mending that it had suffered in its whole course of wear and tear, together with large and frequent spots of bare, corny skin, which stared out like patches of another stuff, and gave the poor animal the same ragged, motley, beggar-like aspect that distinguished his loving master. On this reverend hack, with a sack for his saddle, Johnny usually took his station about an hour after day-light, and was seldom restored to the ground before dark. His labour and ceremony of mounting were by no means the least entertaining act of his day to lookers-on, though a sore tax on his own infirmities. With the help of two or three neighbours, who would always willingly be present, and his own hooked fingers, he contrived to scramble up and fall upon his belly across his horse's back, where he lay straightened out and sec-sawing like a plank, till he was stopped by his friends, who would swing him round, force open "his damned obstinate legs," as he called them, and push him, and pull him, and poke him about, and so, at last compel him to sit. This difficulty conquered, he had still much to do before he got fairly under way. As he had no fund of ready activities about him for accidents as they might happen, it was an object to make his furniture and himself fast at once in the posture in which they were to remain, and which was best suited to his convenience and the general necessities of his voyage. And first his basket was handed up to him, the receptacle of his prizes, which he duly placed on his left thigh: he then introduced his left arm with the assistance of the right under the arch of the handle, and secured both articles in their places, by means of three or four turns of the bridle round his wrist. Bob, with many other faculties, had entirely lost his sense of bridle, yet the implement was still retained, and, bitless as it was, fastened to his head as to a post, not only for decency's sake, but as something for Johnny to take hold of for his ease and security. Now as our adventurer neyer dismounted when abroad, unless tempted by a mighty prize indeed, and as the act of dismounting and again mounting was, with such casual help as he could procure, in itself equivalent to at least half a day's work, he had provided againt the necessity of leaving his seat by a simple instrument of his own invention-a long pole with a spike and hook at one end, with which he had learned to stick, pick, pull, and bring to basket all such valuables as he was ordinarily in the habit of meeting with. He grasped this pole in the centre, bearing it as a knight bears his lance, and derived from it an air of Quixotic dignity and pretension that added greatly to the whimsicality of his whole figure and deportment. Thus fully equipped, he fearlessly trusted himself to the elements, making his way at a steady and solemn pace to the shore, to which all the winter through he was as constant as the tides. To have lived within sight of his bounds and not to have known him, would have been like not to have known the sky. During all the stormy season of the year he was as one of the natural parts of the sea-side, a something that one could as little have afforded to miss as a point of the bay, or the sands at low-water. There was cliff--and beach-and wind-and rain-and sea —and surf, and-" Old Johnny Wolgar." For me who was a sea-roamer like himself, there seldom passed a day in which I did not encounter him, and from our continual familiarity we soon became sworn friends and allies. I watched him narrowly, and have him, I think, in all his lineaments and actions thoroughly by heart. His riding was delicious. Nothing could be more sedate and slow than Bob's pace, (he had but one) and a man on his back would naturally have been subjected to little more agitation than in his easy chair. But Johnny had a series of actions-a regular body-work entirely of his own making, which, contrasted with the grave deportment of his beast, had a very ludicrous effect. A hasty observer might have attributed these actions to fair riding, but they were, in truth, in conformity rather with the speed at which his horse ought to have gone, than to any movements which he could actually be charged with. This system of self-impulsion (which gave him the air of outriding his horse all to nothing,) was originally adopted, perhaps, from testiness and impatience, and came at length to be persisted in as a mere habit-though it had the good effect of giving him a degree of ex ise and warmth, which it was qu foreign from Bob's will or power were all grown into matters of custom and prescription, and there was no resistance on one side, because there was no command on the other. Each may have had his vagrant wishes-his unruly thoughts of a little faster or a little slower; but these never ripened into deeds. At every twentieth pace, Johnny stopped: and at every thirtieth pace, Bob stopped: Johnny stopped to see or fancy he saw something: and Bob stopped-it was not easy to say why-but he did-and so they proceeded, if such a term can be applied to them, darkling on their way through gloom and mist at the edge of the roaring surf, as satisfied with their destiny and each other as any couple in the world. I never discovered by what means of communication they conversed together: that there was no interpretation of purposes through whip, spur, or bridle, I can affirm; neither was there a word spoken-gee-up or gee-wo. There must have been some secret sympathy between them, I suspect, on all the great topics of the day, which each obeyed as an instinct---or it may be that Bob had as much taste and as ready an eye for a waif as his rider, and that so, under one impulse, they moved and paused together with such silent harmony. Be this as it may, Bob invariably, and of his free will, stopped just where it was expected he should, resuming his course in his own good time; and for this punctual service on his master's account, Johnny, to do him justice, gave him unlimited license in his own stops-still, however, preserving his personal independence, manifested by that same voluntary of his which I have spoken of--bowing and bobbing about on his stock-fast steed, like a child astride on a chair. The journey, condueted on these principles, amounted (including the outward and homeward passage) to about five miles, and was performed generally in about seven hours. As a feat of activity, this may not be thought much of, yet, with its usual accompaniment of wind and wet, it would have killed thousands, I fancy, who make far more noise in the world than Johnny. For his part, he made not the least account of the weather, as it addressed itself to his poor old hide; considering it good or bad only as it furnished provision for his basket. A fine day was a storm of wind from the south-west; and if there was a deluge of rain with it-why so-it was a mere chip in porridge. He sat in the rain with as much composure and apparent unconsciousness as a gooseberry bush. Not that he had a preference for such exposure, but that, duty impelling, and his character as a roamer being at stake, he had brought himself to this Spartan contempt of suffering. The south-east and south-west gales, the fiercest of the winter, were precisely those that sent most riches to the shore, so that if ever there was a day in the week peculiarly bad, Johnny had always the luck to be in the thick of it. He was often, to be sure, buffeted about by the wind most cruelly; and, in the weakliness of his latter days, had some times much ado to maintain himself in any decent posture of ease, safety, or dignity. You might have seen him in a squall, clinging with both arms round his horse's neck-tail to wind,--his basket capsized and hastening fitfully homewards-his lance overboard and himself in momentary danger of his dismissal before the rage of the tempest. This he called "lying-to." On such occasions his fragmental dress would be sorely discomposed, entire vestments would be blown from his back; while such rigging as still adhered to him became so loosened and at large, that he rattled in the wind like a ship "in stays." In this disordered plight, the dripping old Triton had to encounter on his way home through the village, the wit and banter of his fellow-townsmen, who being mostly sea-faring people, would hit him off in a variety of nautical allusions, making out in his lamentable figure, all the circumstances of a three-decker that had just been hurricaned over the Atlantic. All this Johnny bore with a seaman's patience: he had withstood the roaring and blasts of the gale without flinching or fear, and it would have been hard indeed if he was to be put out of his way by the breath of man. war of wind and rain, were a striking exemplification of the force of habit. He certainly did not derive them from the soundness and activity of his internal organs or the energies of his muscular system: he was miserably feeble in every way worn out-yet he lived through a series of daily outrages that would have overpowered many a man with ten times his strength and powers of generating heat. His skin seemed entirely to have lost its excitability to the impressions of cold and wet! the whole outer crust of the man had become callous and insensible. He never "caught cold,”—indeed, he had never any particular disorder belonging to him-being sensible only of an equal and uniform decay-a regular and universal abatement of the vital principle. He was very old in short. All the injury that the weather could do him it had done; he was as stiff and cramped as it was possible to be, and having reached this degree of fixedness and schirrosity alive, he trusted his impenetrable trunk to the inclemencies of the skies, as confidently as his water-proof hat. The same remarks will precisely apply to his fellow-traveller Bob, of whom it could no longer be said that he was nimble and frisky, but who would stand to be pelted at by a winter's rain with a degree of spirit and alacrity, that would have shamed the best Arabian that ever was bred. I do not mean it to be implied from this account of Johnny's hardihood that he was never cold; he was always so; as cold as any thing that has life cold as a frog under the ice. It was only that he had no painful sense of such a state of body: he did not feel cold, though in point of fact he was well aware that he was never warm. His whole tangible frame, the surface of him had been for some years, he imagined, dead: there might still, he suspected, be some slight processes of heat going on about his heart; but this feeble sun of his system was so nearly burned out, that it had no sympathies to spare for its remote dependencies no fellow-feeling for the tips of uno touch of kindness for distantelations in fingers and toes. His looks His capabilities of endurance, in this when abroad were hyperborean-quite Polar; and might have served for a head of winter. A crystal drop always hung like a gem at his nose-and his eyes streamed with icy tears. In his manners, Johnny was exceedingly respectful, preserving a stately ceremoniousness in his deportment, that savoured much of what we understand by the "old school" of polite. ness. He was none of your "free and easy" gentlemen, affected no republican rudeness and familiarity by way of asserting his rights-bad a horror of radicalism-(he was one who had something to lose I warrant you) and never took a liberty with any man. Whenever we met he always took off his hat-held it scrupulously at some distance from his head, and made me a most deferential bow. I did not like this humility of obeisance, for though a great admirer of gentleness of manners, and no confounder of the distances and degrees that separate the classes of men-yet age with me has its own rank-its dignities in wrinkles and white hairs, that supersede all other distinctions. When a very old man, though in rags, prostrates himself before me, an upstart of yesterday, I cannot help feeling a sense of impropriety in the act-of violence done to the just order of precedence, as founded in the laws of natural etiquette, which no lowliness and beggary on his side can reconcile me to. The distinctions of rank should surely be maintained; but what is greater, in its claims to tender and respectful consideration, than threescore and ten? Johnny was pretty nearly a match for any body-but a few paces from that common home which makes equals of us all. With such feelings, I soon explained to him that he might spare his bow; but whatever may have been the worthiness of my intentions, they quite missed their mark, for the old man was so taken with what he was pleased to think my condescension in this respect, that he bowed to me with ten times more determinacy than ever-defeating me in the perverse spirit of Steele's funeral recruits" the more he gave them the merrier they looked." It will scarcely be supposed that I was so incurious as not to have my peep into his basket. I would not trifle with my reader's suspense; but what does he suppose I saw there? What was the result of the laborious preparations-the toilsome marches— and long scuffling with the tempest that I have explained of him? The produce was variable; but the following inventory may be relied upon as a pretty fair representation of its kind and amount for four days out of the six. "A piece of wood-oak-with a nail in it; (important ;) three pieces of rope; (not worth much, but fit for oakum any day;) an old shoe-slight, and upper leather wanting; (good for nothing-but will burn;) a bit of stranded fish of the flat kind—much bruised, and rather on the go;' (to be reserved for dame Wolgar's judgment :) a piece of canvas-a mere rag, and quite rotten; (see how it turns out when dry—and when the worst's told will do for the paper-makers;) a piece of blue cloth-coarse-but in tolerable preservation; (do for a seat for son-inlaw's breeches-make a mop-or a thousand things ;) seven bones of the cuttle fish (sold at three pence a pound, to make pounce-or 'something white for the doctors :) the brim of a hat; (no great matter, but to be taken home for-consideration :) a ship's block belonging to (Hush!)." Add to this miscellany, a handful or two of sticks or chips for fire-wood, and you will have what Johnny would have esteemed a very reasonable day's allowance. One of the articles, the bones of the cuttle fish, valued at three-pence a pound, may raise an image of gain, which it is necessary to qualify a little. True it is that these bones could be sold at three-pence a pound, and a pound, with all Johnny's spirit and perseverance, could be collected in about a week. In the beginning of the winter, indeed, when these fish cast their bones (an odd habit! but I speak on Johnny's credit, being myself but superficial-only skin-deep-on cuttle-fish) they might be procured in greater abundance; but, even with this golden time included, he did not make |