misunderstood each other. The use of the crocodile has now been cleared
up--viz., to be ridden; and the final cause of man is that he may
improve the health of the crocodile by riding him a-fox-hunting before
breakfast. And it is pretty certain that any crocodile who has been
regularly hunted through the season, and is master of the weight he
carries, will take a six-barred gate now as well as ever he would have
done in the infancy of the pyramids.

If, therefore, the crocodile does _not_ change, all things else
undeniably _do_: even the shadow of the pyramids grows less. And
often the restoration in vision of Fanny and the Bath road makes me too
pathetically sensible of that truth. Out of the darkness, if I happen
to call back the image of Fanny, up rises suddenly from a gulf of forty
years a rose in June; or, if I think for an instant of the rose in
June, up rises the heavenly face of Fanny. One after the other, like
the antiphonies in the choral service, rise Fanny and the rose in June,
then back again the rose in June and Fanny. Then come both together, as
in a chorus--roses and Fannies, Fannies and roses, without end, thick
as blossoms in paradise. Then comes a venerable crocodile, in a royal
livery of scarlet and gold, with sixteen capes; and the crocodile is
driving four-in-hand from the box of the Bath mail. And suddenly we
upon the mail are pulled up by a mighty dial, sculptured with the
hours, that mingle with the heavens and the heavenly host. Then all at
once we are arrived at Marlborough forest, amongst the lovely
households [Footnote: "_Households_":--Roe-deer do not congregate
in herds like the fallow or the red deer, but by separate families,
parents and children; which feature of approximation to the sanctity of
human hearths, added to their comparatively miniature and graceful
proportions, conciliates to them an interest of peculiar tenderness,
supposing even that this beautiful creature is less characteristically