off the possibility of moisture would have upon the drought of the palate. The folks are crazy for it. It's my conviction, if the thimble men, that Sir James Graham has brought to poverty and ruin, were to come over here, in a gentlemanly condition, with nice little rosewood tables, clean shirts, and discretion enough to hold their tongues, they might make their fortunes between Christmas and Midsummer. I have a strong notion of getting up a company to carry out the plan. In the meantime, it's finding money to operate in horse schemes here just now. The Société de Jockeys (that's what they call themselves, I think), are as mad as Bedlam about the turf, and racing, and Tattersall's, and the like. Only talk to a member about the odds, and he'll thank you to put him into your book at any price. Don't imagine I'm romancing. Just let me prime and load with this Turkish again, and I'll tell you how to circumvent the chivalry of France upon a scale that would astonish the Governor of Moscow !"

"A CALL FOR THE CLIPPERS."

ENGRAVED BY S. ALLEN, FROM A PAINTING BY H. ALKEN.

"For I love a fox in the cover to find,
Who'll fly for his life in a cou-west wind,
Leaving shirkers and skirters miles behind,

Since the Tally-higho! in the morning."

"That's the time o'day! Yoick! Have on him and at him, my lads, and get all hands to the fore! Never mind, sir-never mindfew fragments and no fractures. A little wetting or waiting never did a man much harm yet; and if the chesnut is in a bit of a hurry, why sure we'll drop you a line as to where you may hit on him in the course of a week or so!"

"Here we are again" at last, with a touch of the brush at the brush -sic nos servavit Diana-"the best sport of all," as our friend the Oxonian remarks, "though placed at the end of all." Here have we been running on from October with race-horses, brood-mares, pheasant-shooting, snipe-shooting, and other subjects strong in variety, flattering ourselves all along that we kept introducing each at the most appropriate period; and there has been that king of fine fellows and fine sportsmen, the fox-hunter rough and ready, fretting and fuming away at our self-complacency and his neglect; expecting and disappointed from month to month-opening on staghunting, deer-hunting, duck-hunting, &c. &c., until at length, his

patience fairly failing him, out it comes "hot and strong :"-" Why, d-n the thick-headed knave! I suppose he never heard of such a thing as fox hunting?"

"Bless the sweet-tempered, dear, handsome gentleman," as the copper-coloured conjuror observes to the irascible, bottled-nosed old swell, who, resisting all the temptations of fine dashing ladies, with finer fortunes, has just sworn he'll let the dogs loose if she don't leave the premises that moment; "Bless his lovely, good-humoured countenance! he'd never go to hurt a poor soul as wishes him and his the best of luck at all times?" Now, we can clearly prove, friend Rough-and-Ready, that we are not copper-coloured -as, also, alas! beyond all doubt, that we are not conjurors; but then, perhaps, we do deal in fine promises and long yarns-and as most assuredly we wish you-bless that good-natured countenance !—the best of luck at all times! you'll not go to be dangerous, but suffer us to nick in this "clipping" affair, till the first fence that acts as a floorer pleases you to ride over or on us.

Well, many blessings on the man, whoever he was, that invented fox-hunting! For, when we do get thoroughly warm, what a glory of joy and blaze of triumph we share in! How it occupies every movement of mind and body, and banishes all but the very action of the minute! We came out this morning, we will own, crammed up to the eyes with nothing but hints, thoughts, rules and letters on riding to hounds; and yet for this last twenty minutes have been fighting our way over impassable doubles, smashing the top-rails of impracticable timber, and clearing unapproachable brooks, with no more idea, care, or thought of that we had been studying-of feeling our horse's mouth with a fine finger at the in and out-of giving the lift of hand and heel at the moment required and described at page one hundred and fifty-three-applying a strong determined stroke of the whip at the rising point, or anything of that sort, than we have of fulfilling scientific directions for rising higher and higher in the balloon of Mr. James Green, or for sinking lower and lower in the diving-bell of any other Green.-It came all naturally, no doubt, but only mind what we say we are half-mad at the time, we confess, but then it's the madness of ecstacy and experience.-If you will and can start from the cover-side to ride a run as quiet, cool, and collected, with as much jealousy and business in the matter as if you were just off for the Cesarewitch, with two hundred down if you won, or risking your neck in one of the "Grand Nationals" on the usual terms of "half the horse and three parts of the stake," why of course you may make every act an exploit, and every move a bit of fine science full of study, labour, and danger. On the other hand, if you feel the real heart and enthusiasm of a sportsman (of a fox-hunter that is) within you, how every care, cross-purpose, and inconvenience bows down to the Goddess of the Chase! How gates as high and as black-looking as those before Apsley House, content themselves with reasonable proportions at your charge!-how walls, of which human eye never before saw the top, accommodate their altitude to your capability, with a politeness equalled only by Astley's pasteboard particulars! And how licks on the head from the boughs of

trees, double and treble knocks on the knees from heard-hearted posts, or pokes in the ribs from Pegasus in his efforts to be first up again, come like the fan of the butterfly's wing; or, to use Mr. Maxwell's favourite metaphor, " as light as the thistledown!" Thrice happy the man who can own to all this-who never thinks, feels, or finds out his own ills till the fox has felt his last, and do all with Nature alone for his guide, without the aid or inducement of beer, brandy, or the eyes of England upon him!

Then, again, what a hero it makes of one! How clod-hoppers stare and swear, and bless and blaspheme their own eyes and limbs as you peril yours! and what unsolicited approbation and rounds of applause greet feats of natural magic that Herr Dobler never dared, and the Wizard of the North never dreamt of! Cottage maids smirk, and ladies fair smile-either, like an artist's account of a Derby winner-all admiration and superlative expletives. Road travellers brighten up at the mere sight of the red rag, while the cry of hounds wakes whole villages up into a momentary glow of life, bustle, and speed, equalled only by the sound of the dinner-bell to the inmates of an American boarding-house. Aye! lads and lasses, he's worthy of all the fine words and looks you give. All honour to the man who can go right to the end of a clipper, and all allowance for any little airs or graces he may give himself on having done so! The Io triumphe, of" I was one of the half-dozen," or the attitude of somewhat over-exertion, but self-satisfied fatigue, which winning jockeys and popular orators are so fond of assuming. And what a charm, too, this said "going well to the finish" has on acts which, at any other time and place, would be treated as horrible crimes and heinous offences :

"If you please, sir, Master William's come back at last; and, please sir, he's broke his head and the brown mare's knees!"

"Perhaps he has; but what of it? He's done a deal more than that, I hope."

"Your son, sir, was the third man up, when in the next county but four. We killed that very fox found at the bottom of Vicarage Wood this morning; and though Black Mary may have an everlasting scratch on the knee, and Billy a temporary plaster on the pate, they have gained a stamp of being the real genuine article that will eclipse and blot the blemishes out and out again!"

Can you, after such an explanation from "the captain," for one second suppose that Billy's to have a parental lecture on the value of whole-skins and horse-flesh by way of dessert to his nine o'clock dinner? Not a bit of it! There'll be as much attention and petting paid-as many blandishments and bandages ready for horse and master, as if that trophy of triumph, poor pug's pad, had already been valued at fifty thousand dollars; or the action, as a whole, considered rather a cut or two above Waterloo !

CARTING.

BY BEE'S-WING.

There are sportsmen-aye, and men who are called good sportsmen, too-men who can kill their fifty and even a hundred brace at that farm-yard shooting called " battue shooting"-who would find a very great difficulty in killing five or six brace of grouse a-day about November to the end of the season on a moor that has been pretty well shot over; they would not even know how to go about getting birds. See them go out in the usual way-though, by the bye, it is seldom that those who can enjoy (?) a battue trouble the moors in the latter part of the season; but I just think I see a gentleman (who has been a week or two on the moors in August, coming again in the beginning of December to shoot out the season) shouldering his gun, as if killing were a matter of course; and as he thinks, but is not exactly certain, that the birds will be wild, he takes only one dog-for a wonder. Getting out, he is very much astonished to see the birds rise before he is within-I was going to say, almost sight of them-but before he is within a thousand yards of them; he travels half the day, and gets nothing-except an appetite for dinner; he has not even the consolation of a single shot. He thinks it very odd that his gamekeeper kills 80 much game, but he does not ask how he manages it; that would be to confess ignorance; the consequence is, he votes grouse-shooting at that season a bore, and returns to his "battue." A word or two by the way on battue shooting, which I am sorry has come so much into fashion lately. There is-there can be no pleasure in it, more than setting to work and shooting all your hens, cocks, ducks, geese, and pigeons at a farm-house; there wants the exercise, the great pleasure of seeing your dogs "behave" themselves, the knowledge that you have earned your dinner by hard work-all which pleasures are coupled with other species of shooting. A few days' grouse-shooting after the frosts begin to set in, when the birds. begin to get grown and in full feather, are much preferable, and far superior sport in my opinion than all the "battues" in the world, especially if you know how to go about it. True, I take a delight in a travel over the moors; and if I can get an occasional shot now and then, I am content. I thus preserve my health by my exercise; and shooting a bird now and then only sharpens my appetite for further exertion. I leave wholesale slaughter to apoplectic old gentlemen -who can enjoy it in their easy chairs, and to young gentlemen who would not go upon the moors for fear of wetting their feet-besides, as they say, "it is so fatiguing."