social benefits of the general classes of mankind would show itself to be about on a par with that of those who fancy that the expense of a pack of hounds does not, on the aggregate, repay the cost many times over by the benefits it diffuses in its various ramifications.

In alluding to hunting, I have particularly specified fox-hunting. By this it was in no way my intention to show any disrespect towards hunting in any other way; no matter what the animal we pursue, the hunter is, in his general attributes of mind, habit, and disposition, the same— varied, of course, by where he hunts; but whether he pursues the stag, the fox, the hare, or the otter, in England-the elephant, in Ceylonthe tiger, in Bengal-the buffalo, on the Prarie the beaver, in the Canadas or the ibex, on the Alps-I respect them all. Hunting anything (except a still in Ireland) always produces benefit to the individual and others; and so far as the mere amusement is to be considered, that hunting a man prefers is the best for HIM. I merely allude particularly to fox-hunting, because it is the most in vogue, and therefore produces the most effect in this country.

Of stag-hounds we have few; and the only reason why those few do not, I should say, produce so much good effect as an equal number of packs of fox-hounds, is that the field is not in a general way so exclusively made up by the same persons, or by men constantly hunting with them; they are like some of our metropolitan packs, more resorted to by strangers, who come for a gallop, and are consequently often not overparticular what lands (and sometimes what hounds) they ride over. Many of the field with such packs hunt only probably once a weekmany of them this week at Croydon, the next at Ware, the next with the Queen's, just as the fixture may suit their taste or convenience, neither of which, perhaps (with some of them) would be consulted in giving them a twist over the Harborough country. There is not, therefore, with such packs (among the field) that sociality, and if I may use the term, that responsibility that is always attached to the known members of a pack of fox-hounds in more distant counties: the expenditure of the establishment, of course, is highly beneficial to the neighbourhood, as is that of the persons who hunt with such hounds; but the benefit derived from bringing individual on friendly terms with individual is certainly not so great where strangers form a large proportion of the field as where it is the reverse still the villages within a certain distance of Barnstead Downs would fully bear me out in my assertion that hounds do a vast deal of good in a neighbourhood, and I now much fear have no great reason to bless the first promoter of railroads. Hunting was the life, the soul, almost the very being of these villages." Alas! poor Yorick!"

Well, thank Fate! it has not been found as yet convenient to keep a stud in London, and send on sixty or seventy miles on the north road in the morning, by rail; and judging by the red lines in "Bradshaw's Railroad Guide," if all the kind intentions of projectors were to be carried into effect, it would be useless to send there, for by the pretty little net-work they have marked out, we should not be left a gorse cover without a railroad through it, and perhaps a station at its two extremities, to say the least. When this takes place, "My native land, good night."

Shooting, no doubt, but in a very minor way, contributes its quota

towards benefiting many persons. I make no doubt that the good people of the north, who let the right of shooting, beginning the 12th of August, at a price that allows a man to make presents of grouse at something like a guinea a brace, think shooting is of vast benefit to mankind. It certainly keeps a considerable number of keepers in the world, and has also occasionally been the means of sending a few of them out of it. Still it circulates money; it also circulates the blood, by giving many a man a good day's walk, who when in London would order his cab to take him from Belgrave-square to Tattersall's; and it further gets him in good wind and good condition by the time he wants his horses to be the same. Thank grouse and partridges for this! for as to pheasants, since the hen-roost-massacre system, alias battuing, has come in vogue, they afford but little healthful exertion; nor do hares, for, verily, on such occasions all goes to net, birds or quadruped, and, for all I know, creeping things innumerable, both small and great beast. But even this most despicable of all sporting has something to be said in its praise (as all sporting has); it enables those who join in it to show attentions to their friends in the shape of presents, and this I conceive is all that ingenuity could invent for its commendation. Though no disciple of the gun myself, I respect those who (as true sportsmen) are, and can admire a couple of brace of fine, high ranging dogs, as much as any man. My cordial good wishes attend their owners!

Hare-hunters are in no one way behind the fox-hunter in all the good fellowship and all those sterling good qualities that render man admirable. In two particulars (though name it not at head-quarters) they are perhaps superior; they have, in a general way, less affectation than the modern fox-hunter; and-out it must come-though not such splendid riders, are generally better sportsmen. If hounds could speak, they would tell why.

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The mean, murdering, coursing crew," as that best of all poets on sporting calls them, owe him a heavy grudge for his illiberal designation. Why coursing a hare should be more murder than hunting her, I do not know. I should prefer the hunting-this is a matter of taste; but I fear puss would equally call me a murderer. Pot-hunters I hate ; perhaps our poet alluded to them; and I suspect he never saw coursing in the neighbourhoods of Swaffham, Newmarket, or Amesbury. Catch me refusing an invite to a club dinner at either place, and catch a landlord showing inattention on such occasions.

The gentle craft, albeit their display is not of an ostentatious character, diffuse their benefits pretty widely, and landlords and watermen feel these benefits. Even the little modest inn at Broxbourne has housed and bedded many a jovial soul, who once was wont to sojourn there to catch fish. He now runs down by rail for a few hours to throw his line where no fish are. They multiply by thousands, it is true; so have fishermen, thanks to railroads. The true sportsman, even as a fisher, must find some more distant scene for his sport, less interrupted by London apprentices "et hoc genus."

Let us, however, trust that some green spot-some oasis (not in the desert, but amidst the throng), will still be left for the sportsman, and that his place will not be usurped by the mere sporting man, whose attributes and character we will next consider,

H. H.

HIGHLAND SPORTS, AND SPORTING QUARTERS.

BY LINTON.

(Continued.)

There are, probably, few periods more exhilirating in the life of a sportsman than that when he finds himself, at the commencement of the season, in the freshness of early morning, on the heathered mountain, prepared for his first day's grouse shooting.

"At the peep of dawn o'er the dewy moors,

For the sportsmen have mounted the topmost crags,
And the fleet dogs bound o'er the mossy hags,

And the mist clears off as the lagging sun

With his first ray gleams on the glancing gun,
And the startled grouse, and the blackcock spring,
At the well-known report, on whirring wing."

Not that we pretend to be an advocate for the general habit, adopted by many, of commencing a day's shooting at an unreasonably early hour, and which is by some considered so absolutely necessary to obtain sport.

There is a sort of faintness of the inner man experienced before the sun is well o'er the horizon, which dims the sight, wearies the limbs, unsteadies the hand, and consequently unsettles the aim ere you get well into the business of the day; and we therefore humbly declare, on our own part at least, that not having taken out a license to sell game, and the quality of the sport, not the quantity bagged, being our object when enjoying such delights, we have never been able to discover the utility of walking through wet turnips with an empty stomach; or on the dewy moors, with a ravenous appetite, and eyes like a five-days' old puppy-dog, half open.

If you have to meet a pack of hounds some twenty miles from home, get up as early as you please; at all events, be in ample time to see them thrown into covert; not, however, without fully preparing your inward, as well as your outward man, for coming events. Should you chance, on the other hand, to find yourself comfortably located in a Highland shooting quarter, there is no reason on earth, or the moors, why you should not take the matter as you do other pleasures in life, that is, obtain all the enjoyments within the range of possibility, and eschew all the inconveniences. By following this principle, if you are not a gainer, you will never be a loser. On our arrival at a sporting abode which hitherto we may not have had the pleasure of visiting, if the time be night we turn in comfortably (even the French make use of the word "comfortâble" in these days, though their application of it proves an entire ignorance of its

meaning); if we awake early, we immediately turn out and take a peep from the window, in the first place to inspect the state of the weather, and then to seek a knowledge of the locale. Should we have a decided object, well and good, we prepare for the occasion; if not, we fairly ensconce ourselves once more between the sheets, and ruminate a little, half dreaming over our expected day's sport by anticipation, and then turn round and have another sound nap just to recruit our limbs for the mountain-sides. Indeed, we know a firstrate shot—in fact, a superior sportsman, whether with the gun, fishingrod, or bridle in hand-who visits the Highlands annually. He makes his appearance about half-past ten or eleven, eats his morning meal peacefully, plentifully, and with evident enjoyment, then lights his Havannah, and about mid-day finds himself knee deep in the flowery heather. We condole with the unfortunate grouse, ptarmigan, or blackcock, who have the temerity to rise within distance of his unerring aim their rise is but to fall again for ever. He shoots on steadily till the sun sinks behind the western mountains, then lights another fragrant weed, and turns his steps homewards; appears dressed and cool at the dinner table, and is a most lively and agreeable companion; and when the game-book is brought in for an entry of the day's sport, few can ever number the total bagged that he can. This is the sort of man to have as a companion in a Highland shooting quarter; not your restless, quicksilvery fellow, who can neither take his own "ease at his inn," nor will he allow any one else to do so; who gets up before sunrise, and is, consequently, dead beat before it has crossed the meridian; and instead of really enjoying a day's sport, a cool bottle of claret after dinner, qualified by a tumbler of mountain dew hot with, and perhaps just one cigar to prevent indigestion, or a little moderate "vingt-et-un" to pass the evening merrily, quits the table for an arm-chair, and in five minutes is snoring like a buffalo. Sportsmen, permit us to recommend your taking it easy, as the midshipman of that name so justly advised and practised, whether it be in the turnips in September, or on the moors in August. This is the plan we have hitherto pursued, and we have found it to be both successful and agreeable, notwithstanding all that has been said and written about the want of scent after mid-day.

On the morning subsequent to our chase of the roe-deer, which unfortunately was to be our last at Meggernie on that occasion, having engaged ourselves to visit other friendly quarters, we had determined to take a sort of rambling excursion all over the hills around and in the immediate neighbourhood of the castle, and with this arrangement the whole party were luckily well pleased. Having therefore, as usual, made sad havoc among the dainties which were bountifully spread before us, we prepared ourselves for another day of entire enjoyment. Human thoughts will, however, wander in the best regulated brain, which unquestionably ours is not; and we could never divest our mind, as we sat at the bountiful board, of the idea, that could the founder of that ancient pile, in which we were then so happily domiciled, but walk into the room at the very moment we were about to plunge a fork into the breast of a cold grouse, or in the act of lifting up the cover of some smoking dainty, the chieftain's hand might chance to seek the sharp skeinduh, and play with us the same

trick we were playing with the game. To add to this wandering of our imagination, the portrait of some grim, old laird, with long and flaxen curly wig (evidently one of his descendants'), whose physiog nomy was adorned by an ancient gilded frame, scowled at us, as we sat in our usual seat, face to face with the old gentleman. The tip of his nose appeared to change colour at every morsel we ate, and at times so startled us that we were literally on the point of jumping up and laying hold of the back of the chair for protection; and on one occasion we were nearly choked by the back-bone of a trout when admiring the frill of his shirt.

We must proceed, however, on our sporting walk, instead of dwelling on the family portraits of the Stewarts, of Glen Lyon, or the matinal dainties of Meggernie Castle. Nevertheless, as there are already Meggernie "stakes" at the Liverpool meeting, we see no reason why there should not be potage à la Meggernie in the glen. We shall, however, say no more on this international subject, otherwise we may be taken for a gastronomist, which we are not, instead of an enthusiastic sportsman, which we really are. Indeed, we already fancy we hear some good-natured Norfolk or Hampshire squire, who has killed his twenty brace of partridges in the morning, and is snoozing over the "Mag." in the evening, exclaiming, "Damned"no, we never swear-" Devilish fat, lazy fellow this Mr. Linton must be, who lays down the law so decidedly about early rising and gormandizing; who gets up at eleven, stuffs himself, and looks at old family pictures till twelve, and then calls it taking it easy." You are in error, squire; be cool; we are neither fat nor lazy; we weigh nine stone three pounds in tops and unmentionables, and just nine stone in nankeens; we eat less than most men, and though we do not rise early, we go to bed late, and never could sleep after dinner. Twenty miles to cover with you any day you please. But now to the hills; come and take another walk with your fat, lazy friend: he heartily offers you a share of the sport.

Once more the keeper and the gallant-looking fellow, his aid-(who, by the by, had he been in any station but that of a keeper, we should have endeavoured to have enlisted as a Life-guardsman; for in his kilt he looked well enough; but in the cuirass, and mounted on one of those unequalled black chargers which adorn the portals of the Horse Guards, he would have been a fit escort for our lady the Queen)— awaited our commands for the day's march.

"Good morning, Donald; splendid weather for the hills. What luck shall we have to-day?"

"Yes, sir, tis a braw season. May-be we shall meet with some blackcock beyond the garden-dyke; I saw at least fifty of them this morning, feeding soon after day-break."

"The devil you did! Why were we not called?"

He laughed in reply, as much as to say, " It would have been of no avail." He was quite right, he would have called in vain. "Then let us try for these birds at once."

And away we went. Our party was strong: we had four guns, a host of gillies, and two brace of dogs, who, notwithstanding their exertions of the day previous, were tolerably fresh and full of spirit, save the gallant Bran, who, though suffering from his severe injury,