becomes fairly bewildered in his attempts to recognise the points he may have previously noted. It is rather singular, that Captain Harris and myself should have lost ourselves almost on the same spot, and that we should both of us have previously taken the bearings of the only remarkable feature in the landscape, viz., the three table mountains, which bore about W. S. W. of us, at a distance of some twenty-five or thirty miles.

"C. K."

OBSERVATIONS, FROM PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE, ON OLD ENGLISH SPORTS.

THE FOREST, FIELD, AND RIVER; THE KENNEL, THE STABLE, AND THE GUN.

BY THE HON. GRANTLEY F. BERKELEY, M.P.

WHAT a strange time is this in which we live; and what an immense amount of feverish excitement to be doing something, pervades the minds of multitudes! Not content with an attempt to save their own souls, long before they have approached so important a fact, men wage war with that which they please to deem sin in others, and attempt to drive their fellow-creatures into religious habits, as though salvation hereafter was a muscular function, instead of an affair of a nature exclusively spiritual. Following up the same puritanical doctrine which has governed many of the actions of the "Cruel Society," in London, for the persecution of the poor, and the ruin of all sporting recreations in this country, the liberty of the subject is again assailed upon the free bosom of the Thames, and the boat or barge is not to be permitted to pass calmly and restfully through a loch on the sabbath day, simply because it has been discovered that bargemen, and watermen generally, are deficient in their catechism. Now let us turn, for a moment, to one of the arguments advanced by the reverend Wizards of the North, in their late holy war upon the lollipops of children, referred to in the preceding number of the REVIEW, and observe if their sauce for their goose would not be sauce for our gander, and if their reasoning (if we chose to adopt so farcical a line) would not apply to the barge, as well as to the steam-carriage. We know that the bargemen of the Thames, and of the canals, are not the best class of persons in the world; among them there are many honest men, no doubt it were an uncharitable sin to deny it; but still, this grade of persons, if prevented from their quiet and inoffensive occupation of floating along the bosom of the waters, and thrown on shore, slaves to the root of all evils, idleness, why, the yeomen and farmers on the banks of the river, as well as in the proximity of the railroad station, may find it necessary to refrain from places of public worship, to watch and guard the privacy of their own premises. The fact of closing all the lochs on the stream, and forcing men to be idle, will not unlock the fasten

ings of the human heart, and render it accessible to religion, if not predisposed to such a course by some more spiritually governing power. If the mind of man be inclined to contemplate the great benefit to come, I scarce know any more apt place for deep meditation, than the calm surface of the silent waters. In making a high road across a wilderness, on which to convey the goods of this world to gainful approximation, man takes care, before the surface is apportioned to receive the useful and valuable wheel, that beneath there should be a firm and secure foundation; else the swampy and base soil of the natural strata, or inferior clay, would rise up to overwhelm his labours. Thus should it be in the more serious task of religious reformation. Before you can usefully force a people to cease from occupation, you should arrive at some degree of conviction that their undisposed-of time would really be employed in purposes essential to their welfare. Before you make an idle man, you should take care to give him an inclination to a better path, and that the road of the spirit was calculated healthfully to bear to the structures of faith, whether of the protestant, the catholic, or the dissenter, the load of clay with which it was encumbered.

I confess that, in my opinion, there is a monstrous unquiet abroad, the feverish excitement of which is much inclined to mar the stability of our best institutions. Old English sports are rendered illegal; a surface cloak, or an appearance of sanctity, is forced upon the limbs of society, as the rags of poverty may be disguised beneath a good great coat, till the most unthinking portion of the people are taught to know that an outward attention to an inward grace, like the great coat before alluded to, covers a multitude of unsightly sins. The working classes who, for centuries, had been content with the fair enjoyment of the seventh day, and, on a leisure hour, with the uninterrupted use of a sporting amusement, few and far between as those amusements were, are now turned into politicians, in a great measure, from the mere fact of having nothing else to think of. It were better to let men fight their cocks and dogs, during a few hours of the week; pass a Sunday, free from sin, in their boats, upon the rivers, or in the railway-carriage, than drive them into a dangerous idleness, without the power of inducing them to religious contemplation. You may lead, but you cannot force men into places of worship; if forced and constrained, their presence there is not worth having. You may teach a man to read, but you have no power to confine him to the perusal of his bible, or to restrain him, the art of letters once obtained, from the study of the worst trash that the atheist or the obscene scribbler can put forth; in short, under the present mania for jumping at once from ignorance to learning-by the hurried gift of letters, you may do as much harm as good. For myself, I confess that I am in favour of the establishment of schools so easy of access, that they shall be within the reach of the most humble means; I am for teaching all those who willingly seek for information, but I am decidedly against all strange coercion, whether to the school or to the church, for by it you desecrate the house of God with the presence of an unbelieving or sneering hypocrite, while you give to the evil inclined, a fresh power of gleaning, from the dark fields of heresy and schism, doctrines alike ruinous to society as to religion: in every sense of the word affording "stones instead of bread."

So feverish and strange are the fallacies of the hour, that we find the asylum in Middlesex turned into a playground for upwards of 900 madmen; while, in the neighbourhood of Paris, we learn, through the pages of the "Morning Post," that high mass is sung by forty lunatics. We all know that the soothing system-that humanity, kindliness, and care, are very beneficial in many cases, or, indeed, to a certain extent, in all cases where intellect is deranged; but it will take much to persuade me, that such a plan can be recommended for general acceptation. It may for a period succeed; but, in regard to the Middlesex Asylum, I confess I shall expect to hear, when the excitement of the game of cricket or bowls has run high, that some eccentric characters have transferred the bat from the wicket to the head of the keeper; and that the forty choristers of high mass, in the vicinity of Paris, have scandalized the service by the adoption of indecent and illusive strains. I arraign the propriety of employing a body of mad people to assist in the service of church or chapel, ⚫ and hold it little else than desecration. Entertaining, as I do, a high sense of the Church of Rome, of her ordinations, of her ministers, and of the general strict propriety of her arrangements, if the "Morning Post" has reported truly, I feel sorry for the fact alleged.

THE FOREST AND THE FIELD.

Turning from argumentative discussion, as blithely as the boy rushes from the school-house door, from the musty book to the sweet green fields of nature, let us now consider many circumstances and facts, arising from the noble art of woodcraft, which, to the observant mind, must be as curious as beautiful.

I may, without prejudice to others, assert, that there is no place that has come within my observation, where the cultivation of the foxhound, and the preservation of the fox and pheasant, is so successfully practised, as on the manors around the Castle of Berkeley. Every tenant on every farm has either one or a couple of foxhound puppies, according to the extent of his occupation, placed with him, from the spring or summer of their birth, till the succeeding April or May, at which time they are of an age sufficient to be brought into the kennel.

The gamekeeper on each respective manor has all these puppies under his surveillance; it is his duty to remark on their condition, their general treatment, and their natural inclinations, whether of activity or idleness; and to be present in the kennel, and report on the latter facts, when the owner of the hounds selects the entry, to be kept for his especial service. All the covers around the Castle are full of game, so much so, that five guns will produce, in less than four hours, upwards of a hundred cock pheasants, besides woodcocks, hares, and rabbits; and the hunting-book of this season will show that, up to the 5th of December, the hounds had been out fifty-four days, and that the scalps of seventy-one foxes had been nailed to the kennel-door. Having prefaced thus much, I will now proceed to give an interesting fact of natural history, which, though one of great beauty, bears with it a shade of melancholy; for it seems, on cool reflection, to be pity to disturb the friendly intercourse of creatures in the winter, whose affections towards each other had arisen in the spring time of their own

existence, and beguiled, in many a graceful gambol, the sunny hours of the summer season.

There is a blackthorn and gorse cover situated on Clapton Hills, by the side of the deer-park at Berkeley, and near it a farm-house, where a couple of foxhound puppies are annually domiciled. The cover is warm, and prettily situated-a place where the earliest primroses spring; while, on the topmost bough of some tall tree above, the first song-thrush, breaking the silence of winter, will take his seat, and sing the landscape into dreams of summer. On the green mead, by the side of this cover, an intimacy arose between a fox and the foxhound puppies. How it was first induced no one can tell; and, knowing the nature of each animal as I do, I can conceive the various expressions of their speaking eyes, and beautiful countenances, at times smoothed and smiling, at others wrinkled into frowns; but, nevertheless, I would have passed many an hour, by night or day, could I have been present at the first exchange of confidence. Now, at that season of the year, this fox must have been strangely in luck to have escaped the noses, and the boding cry, of that searching pack; and, indeed, I hold it impossible but that he must have fled more than once before those stirring sounds, which soon become to be well understood by the animal creation, though echoing far and "distant down the hollow wind." It is the more remarkable, therefore, at this season of the year, that an intimacy of any sort should have sprung up between animals of such different natures; but the fact was, as I am about to relate it. The puppies were a certain size, and had taught themselves to hunt, through the number of hares upon their walk; yet, nevertheless, they laid aside the chief attributes of their disposition, and, when in company with this fox, had nothing but play and good fellowship in their sagacious heads. At times, in the day, and in the afternoon, the fox might be seen lingering, by the side of his cover, in sly expectation of his friends; while the puppies would jog together, leisurely, from their farm-yard, for the express purpose of meeting him.

Romps once begun, all timidity and caution were laid aside, and towsling and rolling over each other were the order of the day. Round and round they went, the sterns of the sleek and milk-fed puppies slightly crooked, while the brush of the blue-breasted, ruddy fox was flourished about, or wagged in short and playful eddies round his quarters. After one of these gambols, the fox and puppy would couch down, opposite each other; the one with his ears laid back, and a laughing expression of countenance, when he expected his friend leapingly to advance on him; or his sharp ears pricked up, if he, in his turn, contemplated an assault. The other, with sweeping ears, pendent and moving in the wind, with a smooth or wrinkled, but, on either occasion, equally grave brow, looked as if the business of the universe was mixed up in the passing moment, and as though he never could attend again to any lighter matter. I said, in the commencement of my narration of this fact, that, beautiful as the circumstances attendant on the friendship of these graceful creatures were, they were shadowed by a touch of melancholy; for who, that knew these hounds and fox in their happy hours, could refrain from the saddening thought, that, in a few short months, when the puppies

had been kennelled and entered to the cry, these jovial playmates at the cover side would meet, perhaps, on the scene of their former affections; the one to rouse, and pursue with savage hate to rend, to tear in pieces, and to devour; the other to fly for his life, upon the wings of fear. We forget these things in the heat and excitement of pursuit. Many men, never having closely looked into the strange facts which the book of nature discloses, are even ignorant of them; but I have loved to look and learn within her leaves so long, that little of her revelations have escaped me.

During this present season, in the month of October, there was a similar fact, witnessed by the side of the shrubberies leading to the deerpark; but the alliance was maintained by a stranger friendship still. Between the species of the hound and fox, there is a link and an affinity; but between the colt, the ass, and the fox, exists, one would suppose, not a thought to bring them together. Nevertheless, a beautiful game at play was often engaged in between the last-mentioned trio. The fox would come creeping down the bank of the field, to look for his friends; and, the moment they saw him, up would come both the colt and the ass that kept him company. Having paused, for a moment or two, in contemplation, with a flourish of his brush the fox would spring from his bank into the field; and, having run a short and hasty circle, the suddenness of his motions would set the colt and donkey plunging, kicking, and capering about; and, while they performed their part of the dance, the fox-acting on that excellent advice of let each take care of himself--would spring upon his bank again, and watch, with sly satisfaction, the commotion he had occasioned. The colt, having plunged round the paddock to his heart's content, would finish his passade at the spot whence he started, with a snort that seemed like an explosion from steam, rather than one of concentrated respiration; while the donkey, trotting proud and high, with a haughty toss of his head from side to side, would go closer to the ditch, for a nearer inspection of his lesser friend. This pause having lasted for a few seconds, off would go the fox again, and away the colt and donkey; and so the game was kept up till they were tired, or the near approach of man induced them to attend to other matters. (To be continued.)

THE COTTESMORE HUNT.

LORD LONSDALE has given up the Cottesmore Hunt. Political causes are assigned for his Lordship's resignation of a country, where, for so many years, he has conducted the sport of fox-hunting in every way as became a British nobleman.