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The Duke of Bedford is the leviathan among all the creatures of the crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy bulk, he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty. Huge as he is, and whilst "he lies floating many a rood," he is still a creature.
The nurse is so unhandy; she tumbles the baby about so roughly, handles it so awkwardly, she will certainly dress it too loosely, or too tight, or leave a pin that will prick it, or some terrible calamity will happen. So she takes possession of the little thing, and with a hand guided by experience and the instincts of affection, puts its things on in a Christian and comfortable way.
There would follow giggles, whispers, again giggles; then from the cupboard a book tumbles, then another, then another. Then Miss Jones would say: "Now, Jeremy, come back to the table. You've had quite enough time " interrupted by a perfect avalanche of books. Mary crying: "Oh, Jeremy!" Jeremy crying: "I didn't; it was you!" Miss Jones: "Now, children "
Then I turn down stream again and scramble along to look for the boat that has gone over. The first fall is not great, only 10 or 12 feet, and we often run such; but below, the river tumbles down again for 40 or 50 feet, in a channel filled with dangerous rocks that break the waves into whirlpools and beat them into foam.
Then bang it goes; smash tumbles the door and hatch and all the rest of it, and then out we rushes, knocks 'em over one at a time, and the schooner's ours." "Man, man, can't you see that if we did that we should blow ourselves up as well?" "No, we wouldn't sir, because we'd lie down." "Well, what difference would that make?" "All on it, sir. Powder flies up, and it wouldn't hurt us." "Think not?"
Then, to his dismay, he perceived that she was crying struggling against it so that her shoulder shook against his knee. He had hardly ever known her cry, not in all the disasters of unstable youth, and she had received her full meed of knocks and tumbles. He could only stroke that shoulder, and say: "Don't cry, Gyp; don't cry!"
The street itself, to be sure, is commonplace enough, and hot, dusty, and disagreeable; but if you look above it, or on either side, there are green hills descending abruptly down, and softened with woods, amid which are seen villas, cottages, castles; and beyond the river is a line of crags, perhaps three hundred feet high, clothed with shrubbery in some parts from top to bottom, but in other places presenting a sheer precipice of rock, over which tumbles, as it were, a cascade of ivy and creeping plants.
Let the reader, in order to understand the situation of the place we are describing, imagine to himself a stupendous cliff overhanging a green glen, into which tumbles a silver stream down a height of two or three hundred feet. At the bottom of this rock, a few yards from the basin formed by the cascade, in a sunless nook, was a well of cool, delicious water.
His fathers were mighty hunters, men who lived in the woods, and slept under the free, open heavens, with the stars to hold their candles; and their descendant to this day always acts as if the house were his camp, wears his hat at all hours, tumbles himself about, and puts his heels on the tops of chairs or mantelpieces, just as his father rolled on the green sward, and put his upon trees and logs, keeps all the windows and doors open, winter and summer, that he may get air enough for his great lungs, calls everybody "stranger," with nonchalant bonhommie, and is altogether the frankest, easiest, most jovial creature living.
It's only the pretty pause in the happy scene of the play before the villain comes in and tumbles things about. When I've been on the bridge," he continued, "of a night that set my heart thumping, I knew, by Jingo! it was the devil playing his silent overture. Don't you take in the twaddle about God sending thunderbolts; it's that old war-horse down below.
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