PHILOH.The day is thine,and the night is thine:thou hast prepared the light and the sun.
Peace to your memories,dignified rector,and yet more dignified clerk!-by this time ye are probably gone to your long homes,and your voices are no longer heard sounding down the aisles of the venerable church-nay,doubtless,this has already long since been the fate of him of the sonorous 'Amen!'-the one of the two who,with all due respect to the rector,principally engrossed my boyish admiration-he,at least,is scarcely now among the living!
Living!why,I have heard say that he blew a fife-for he was a musical as well as a Christian professor-a bold fife,to cheer the Guards and the brave Marines,as they marched with measured step,obeying an insane command,up Bunker's height,whilst the rifles of the sturdy Yankees were sending the leaden hail sharp and thick amidst the red-coated ranks;for Philoh had not always been a man of peace,nor an exhorter to turn the other cheek to the smiter,but had even arrived at the dignity of a halberd in his country's service before his six-foot form required rest,and the gray-haired veteran retired,after a long peregrination,to his native town,to enjoy ease and respectability on a pension of 'eighteenpence a day';and well did his fellow-townsmen act,when,to increase that ease and respectability,and with a thoughtful regard for the dignity of the good church service,they made him clerk and precentor-the man of the tall form and of the audible voice,which sounded loud and clear as his own Bunker fife.Well,peace to thee,thou fine old chap,despiser of dissenters,and hater of papists,as became a dignified and High-Church clerk;if thou art in thy grave,the better for thee;thou wert fitted to adorn a bygone time,when loyalty was in vogue,and smiling content lay like a sunbeam upon the land,but thou wouldst be sadly out of place in these days of cold philosophic latitudinarian doctrine,universal tolerism,and half-concealed rebellion-rare times,no doubt,for papists and dissenters,but which would assuredly have broken the heart of the loyal soldier of George the Third,and the dignified High-Church clerk of pretty D-.
We passed many months at this place:nothing,however,occurred requiring any particular notice,relating to myself,beyond what Ihave already stated,and I am not writing the history of others.
At length my father was recalled to his regiment,which at that time was stationed at a place called Norman Cross,in Lincolnshire,or rather Huntingdonshire,at some distance from the old town of Peterborough.For this place he departed,leaving my mother and myself to follow in a few days.Our journey was a singular one.
On the second day we reached a marshy and fenny country,which,owing to immense quantities of rain which had lately fallen,was completely submerged.At a large town we got on board a kind of passage-boat,crowded with people;it had neither sails nor oars,and those were not the days of steam-vessels;it was a treck-schuyt,and was drawn by horses.Young as I was,there was much connected with this journey which highly surprised me,and which brought to my remembrance particular scenes described in the book which I now generally carried in my bosom.The country was,as Ihave already said,submerged-entirely drowned-no land was visible;the trees were growing bolt upright in the flood,whilst farmhouses and cottages were standing insulated;the horses which drew us were up to the knees in water,and,on coming to blind pools and 'greedy depths,'were not unfrequently swimming,in which case,the boys or urchins who mounted them sometimes stood,sometimes knelt,upon the saddle and pillions.No accident,however,occurred either to the quadrupeds or bipeds,who appeared respectively to be quite AU FAIT in their business,and extricated themselves with the greatest ease from places in which Pharaoh and all his host would have gone to the bottom.Nightfall brought us to Peterborough,and from thence we were not slow in reaching the place of our destination.