-one into a painter, before whose thunderous Lurcher-though a' fowr be let lowse on her heavens the storms of Poussin " pale their inef- at ance, and ye surround her or she rise." fectual fires"-another into a poet composing What are your great, big, fat, lazy English and playing, side by side, on his own peculiar hares, ten or twelve pounds and upwards, who harp, in a concert of vocal and instrumental have the food brought to their very mouth in music, with Byron, Scott, and Wordsworth- preserves, and are out of breath with five one into a great soldier, who, when Welling- minutes' scamper among themselves-to the ton is no more, shall, for the freedom of the middle-sized, hard-hipped, wiry-backed, steelworld, conquer a future Waterloo-another legged, long-winded mawkins of Scotland, that who hoisted his flag on the "mast of some tall scorn to taste a leaf of a single cabbage in the ammiral," shall, like Eliab Harvey in the Te- wee moorland yardie that shelters them, but meraire, lay two three-deckers on board at prey in distant fields, take a breathing every once, and clothe some now nameless peak or gloaming along the mountain-breast, untired promontory in immortal glory, like that shining as young eagles ringing the sky for pastime, on Trafalgar. and before the dogs seem not so much scourWell, then, after cat-killing comes Coursing. ing for life as for pleasure, with such an air Cats have a look of hares-kittens of leverets of freedom, liberty, and independence, do they -and they are all called Pussy. The terriers fling up the moss and cock their fuds in the are useful still, preceding the line like skirmish-faces of their pursuers. Yet stanch are they ers, and with finest noses startling the mawkin to the spine-strong in bone, and sound in from bracken-bush or rush bower, her sky-bottom-see, see how Tickler clears that light garret in the old quarry, or her brown study in the brake. Away with your coursing on Marlborough downs, where huge hares are seen squatted from a distance, and the sleek dogs, disrobed of their gaudy trappings, are let slip by a Tryer, running for cups and collars before lords and ladies, and squires of high and low degree-a pretty pastime enough, no doubt, in its way, and a splendid cavalcade. But will it for a moment compare with the-and leaped and swam about-at his own sudden and all-unlooked-for start of the "auld witch" from the bunweed-covered lea, when the throat of every pedestrian is privileged to ery "halloo-halloo-halloo"-and whipcordtailed greyhound and hairy lurcher, without any invidious distinction of birth or bearing, lay their deep breasts to the sward at the same moment, to the same instinct, and brattle over the brae after the disappearing Ears, laid flat at the first sight of her pursuers, as with retroverted eyes she turns her face to the mountain, and seeks the cairn only a little lower than the falcon's nest.

twenty-feet moss-hag at a single spang like a bird-tops that hedge that would turn any hunter that ever stabled in Melton Mowbrayand then, at full speed northward, moves as upon a pivot within his own length, and close upon his haunches, without losing a foot, off within a point of due south. A kennel! He never was and never will be in a kennel all his free joyful days. He has walked and run

will, ever since he was nine days old-and he would have done so sooner had he had any eyes. None of your stinking cracklets for him-he takes his meals with the family, sitting at the right hand of the master's eldest son. He sleeps in any bed of the house he chooses; and, though no Methodist, he goes every third Sunday to church. That is the education of a Scottish greyhound-and the consequence is, that you may pardonably mistake him for a deer dog from Badenoch or Lochaber, and no doubt in the world that he would rejoice in a glimpse of the antlers on the weather gleam,

"Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode To his hills that encircle the sea."

What signifies any sport in the open air, except in congenial scenery of earth and heaven? Go, thou gentle Cockney! and angle in the New River;-but, bold Englishman, come with us and try a salmon-cast in the old coarse-rude-artless-unscientific. Tay. Go, thou gentle Cockney! and course a suburban hare in the purlieus of Blackheath; -but, bold Englishman, come with us and course an animal that never heard a city-bell, by day a hare, by night an old woman, that loves the dogs she dreads, and, hunt her as you will with a leash and a half of lightfoots, still returns at dark to the same form in the turf-dike of the garden of the mountain cottage. The children, who love her as their own eyes -for she has been as a pet about the family, summer and winter, since that chubby-cheeked urchin, of some five years old, first began to swing in his self-rocking cradle-will scarcely care to see her started-nay, one or two of the wickedest among them will join in the halloo; for often, ere this, "has she cheated the very jowlers, and lauched ower her shouther at the lang dowgs walloping ahint her, sair forfaquhen, up the benty brae-and it's no the day that she's gaun to be killed by Rough Robin, or smooth Spring, or the red Bick, or the hairy

This may be called roughing it-slovenlyBut we say no-it is your only coursing. Gods! with what a bounding bosom the schoolboy salutes the dawning of the cool-clear-crisp, yes, crisp October morn, (for there has been a slight frost, and the almost leafless hedgerows are all glittering with rime;) and, little time lost at dress or breakfast, crams the luncheon into his pouch, and away to the Trysting-hill Farmhouse, which he fears the gamekeeper and his grews will have left ere he can run across the two long Scotch miles of moor between him and his joy! With steps elastic, he feels flying along the sward as from a spring-board; like a roe, he clears the burns and bursts his way through the brakes; panting, not from breathlessness but anxiety, he lightly leaps the garden fence without a pole, and lo, the green jacket of one huntsman, the red jacket of another, on the plat before the door, and two or three tall rawboned poachers

and there is mirth and music, fun and frolic, and the very soul of enterprise, adventure, and

desperation, in that word-while tall and graceful stand the black, the brindled, and the yellow breed, with keen yet quiet eyes, prophetic of their destined prey, and though motionless now as stone statues of hounds at the feet of Meleager, soon to launch like lightning at the loved halloo !

Out comes the gudewife with her own bottle from the press in the spence, with as big a belly and broad a bottom as her own, and they are no trifle for the worthy woman has been making much beef for many years, is moreover in the family way, and surely this time there will be twins at least-and pours out a canty caulker for each crowing crony, beginning with the gentle, and ending with the semple, that is our and herself; and better speerit never steamed in sma' still. She offers another with "hinny," by way of Athole brose; but it is put off till evening, for coursing requires a clear head, and the same sobriety then adorned our youth that now dignifies our old age. The gudeman, although an elder of the kirk, and with as grave an aspect as suits that solemn office, needs not much persuasion to let the flail rest for one day, anxious though he be to show the first aits in the market; and donning his broad blue bonnet, and the shortest-tailed auld coat he can find, and taking his kent in his hand, he gruffly gives Wully his orders for a' things about the place, and sets off with the yonkers for a holyday. Not a man on earth who has not his own pastime, depend on't, austere as he may look; and 'twould be well for this wicked world if no elder in it had a "sin that maist easily beset him," worse than what Gibby Watson's wife used to call his "awfu' fondness for the Grews!"

church. Then hares shift the sites of their country seats every season. This month they love the fallow field-that, the stubble; this, you will see them, almost without looking for them, big and brown on the bare stony upland lea-that, you must have a hawk's eye in your head to discern, discover, detect them, like birds in their nests, embowered below the bunweed or the bracken; they choose to spend this week in a wood impervious to wet or wind

that, in a marsh too plashy for the plover; now you may depend on finding madam at home in the sulks within the very heart of a bramble-bush or dwarf black-thorn thicket, while the squire cocks his fud at you from the top of a knowe open to blasts from all the airts;-in short, he who knows at all times where to find a hare, even if he knew not one single thing else but the way to his mouth, cannot be called an ignorant man--is probably a better-informed man in the long run than the friend on his right, discoursing about the Turks, the Greeks, the Portugals, and all that sort of thing, giving himself the lie on every arrival of his daily paper. We never yet knew an old courser, (him of the Sporting Annals included,) who was not a man both of abilities and virtues. But where were we ?— at the Trysting-hill Farmhouse, jocularly called Hunger-them-Out.

Line is formed, and with measured steps we march towards the hills--for we ourselves are the schoolboy, bold, bright, and blooming as the rose--fleet of foot almost as the very antelope-Oh! now, alas! dim and withered as a stalk from which winter has swept all the blossoms-slow as the sloth along the ground -spindle-shanked as a lean and slippered pantaloon!

ment the seemingly horned creature appears to dally with the danger, and to linger ere she lays her lugs on her shoulder, and away, like thoughts pursuing thoughts-away fly hare and hounds towards the mountain.

And who that loves to walk or wander over the green earth, except indeed it merely be "O heaven! that from our bright and shining years some sonnetteer or ballad-monger, if he had Age would but take the things youth needed not!" time and could afford it, and lived in a toler- An old shepherd meets us on the long sloping ably open country, would not keep, at the very rushy ascent to the hills-and putting his least, three greyhounds? No better eating brown withered finger to his gnostic nose, inthan a hare, though old blockhead Burton-timates that she is in her old form behind the and he was a blockhead, if blockhead ever dike-and the noble dumb animals, with there was one in this world-in his Anatomy, pricked-up ears and brandished tail, are aware chooses to call it melancholy meat. Did he that her hour is come. Plash, plash, through ever, by way of giving dinner a fair commence- the marsh, and then on the dry furze beyond, ment, swallow a tureen of hare-soup with half you see her large dark-brown eyes-Soho, a peck of mealy potatoes? If ever he did-soho, soho-Holloo, halloo, halloo for a moand notwithstanding called hare melancholy meat, there can be no occasion whatever for now wishing him any further punishment. If he never did then he was on earth the most unfortunate of men. England-as you love us and yourself-cultivate hare-soup, without for a moment dreaming of giving up roasted hare well stuffed with stuffing, jelly sauce being handed round on a large trencher. But there is no such thing as melancholy meat-neither fish, flesh, nor fowl-provided only there be enough of it. Otherwise, the daintiest dish drives you to despair. But independently of spit, pot, and pan, what delight in even daunering about the home farm seeking for a hare? It is quite an art or science. You must consult not only the wind and weather of to-day, but of the night before—and of every day and night back to last Sunday, when probably you were prevented by the rain from going to

Stand all still for a minute-for not a bush the height of our knee to break our view-and is not that brattling burst up the brae "beautiful exceedingly," and sufficient to chain in admiration the beatings of the rudest gazer's heart? Yes; of all beautiful sights-none more, none so much so, as the miraculous motion of a four-footed wild animal, changed at once, from a seeming inert sod or stone, into flight fleet as that of the falcon's wing! Instinct against instinct! fear and ferocity in one flight! Pursuers and pursued bound together, in every turning and twisting of their career, by the operation of two headlong passions! Now they are all three upon her and

she dies! No! glancing aside, like a bullet | toral or silvan heights. If old or indolent, take from a wall, she bounds almost at a right angle your station on a heaven-kissing hill, and hug from her straight course-and, for a moment, the echoes to your heart. Or, if you will ride, seems to have made good her escape. Shooting then let it be on a nimble galloway of some fourheadlong one over the other, all three, with teen hands, that can gallop a good pace on the erected tails, suddenly bring themselves up-road, and keep sure footing on bridle paths, or like racing barks when down goes the helm, upon the pathless braes-and by judicious and one after another, bowsprit and boom horsemanship, you may meet the pack at many almost entangled, rounds the buoy, and again bears up on the starboard tack upon a windand in a close line, head to heel, so that you might cover them all with a sheet-again, all open-mouthed on her haunches, seem to drive, and go with her over the cliff.

a loud-mouthed burst, and haply be not far out at the death. But the schoolboy and the shepherd-and the whipper-in-as each hopes for favour from his own Diana-let them all be on foot-and have studied the country for every imaginable variety that can occur in the winter's We are all on foot-and pray what horse campaign. One often hears of a cunning old could gallop through among all these quag-fox-but the cunningest old fox is a simpleton mires, over all the hags in these peat-mosses, to the most guileless young hare. What deceit over all the water-cressy and puddocky ditches, in every double! What calculation in every sinking soft on hither and thither side, even to squat! Of what far more complicated than the two-legged leaper's ankle or knee-up that Cretan Labyrinth is the creature, now hunted hill on the perpendicular strewn with flint- for the first time, sitting in the centre! a listenshivers down these loose-hanging cliffs-ing the baffled roar! Now into the pool she through that brake of old stunted birches with plunges, to free herself from the fatal scent stools hard as iron-over that mile of quaking that lures on death. Now down the torrent muir where the plover breeds-and-finally-course she runs and leaps, to cleanse it from up-up-up to where the dwarfed heather dies away among the cinders, and in winter you might mistake a flock of ptarmigan for a patch of snow?

The thing is impossible-so we are all on foot-and the fleetest keeper that ever footed it in Scotland shall not in a run of three miles give us sixty yards. "Ha! Peter the wild boy, how are you off for wind?"-we exultingly exclaim, in giving Red-jacket the go-by on the bent. But see-see-they are bringing her back again down the Red Mount-glancing aside, she throws them all three out-yes, all three, and few enow too, though fair play be a jewel-and ere they can recover, she is a-head a hundred yards up the hill. There is a beautiful trial of bone and bottom! Now one, and then another, takes almost imperceptibly the lead; but she steals away from them inch by inch-beating them all blind-and, suddenly disappearing-Heaven knows how-leaves them all in the lurch. With out-lolling tongues, hanging heads, panting sides, and drooping tails, they come one by one down the steep, looking somewhat sheepish, and then lie down together on their sides, as if indeed about to die in defeat. She has carried away her cocked fud unscathed for the third time, from Three of the Best in all broad Scotland-nor can there any longer be the smallest doubt in the world, in the minds of the most skeptical, that she is what all the country-side have long known her to be-a Witch.

From cat-killing to Coursing, we have seen that the transition is easy in the order of nature

and so it is from coursing to Fox-Hunting-by means, however, of a small intermediate step-the Harriers. Musical is a pack of harriers as a peal of bells. How melodiously they ring changes in the woods, and in the hollow of the mountains! A level country we have already consigned to merited contempt, (though there is no rule without an exception; and as we shall see by and by, there is one too here,) and commend us, even with harriers, to the ups and downs of the pas

her poor paws, fur-protected from the sharp flints that lame the fiends that so sorely beset her, till many limp along in their own blood. Now along the coping of stone walls she crawls and scrambles-and now ventures from the wood along the frequented high-road, heedless of danger from the front, so that she may escape the horrid growling in the rear. Now into the pretty little garden of the wayside, or even the village cot, she creeps, as if to implore protection from the innocent children, or the nursing mother. Yes, she will even seek refuge in the sanctuary of the cradle. The terrier drags her out from below a tombstone, and she dies in the churchyard. The hunters come reeking and reeling on, we ourselves among the number-and to the winding horn that echoes reply from the walls of the house of worship-and now, in momentary contrition,

"Drops a sad, serious tear upon our playful pen!' and we bethink ourselves-alas! all in vain for

"Naturam expellas furcă, tamen usque recurret”—

of these solemn lines of the poet of peace and humanity :

"One lesson reader, let us two divide,

Taught by what nature shows and what conceals, Never to blend our pleasure and our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." It is next to impossible to reduce fine poetry to practice-so let us conclude with a panegyric on Fox-Hunting. The passion for this pastime is the very strongest that can possess the heart-nor, of all the heroes of antiquity, is there one to our imagination more poetical than Nimrod. His whole character is given, and his whole history, in two words-Mighty Hunter. That he hunted the fox is not probable; for the sole aim and end of his existence was not to exterminate-that would have been cutting his own throat-but to thin man-devouring wild beasts-the Pards-with Leo at their head. But in a land like this, where not even a wolf has existed for centuries-nor a wild boar-the same spirit that would have driven the British youth on the tusk and paw of the B

Lion and the Tiger, mounts them in scarlet on such steeds as never neighed before the flood, nor "summered high in bliss" on the sloping pastures of undeluged Ararat-and gathers them together in gallant array on the edge of the cover,

"When first the hunter's startling horn is heard Upon the golden hills."

tracts, but for the triumphs of the Turf? Blood |—blood there must be, either for strength, or speed, or endurance. The very heaviest cavalry-the Life Guards and the Scots Greys, and all other dragoons, must have blood. But without racing and fox-hunting, where could it be found? Such pastimes nerve one of the arms of the nation when in battle; but for them

What a squadron of cavalry! What fiery eyes 'twould be palsied. What better education, and flaming nostrils-betokening with what 100, not only for a horse, but his rider, before ardent passion the noble animals will revel in playing a bloodier game in his first war camthe chase! Bay, brown, black, dun, chestnut paign? Thus he becomes demicorpsed with sorrel, gray-of all shades and hues-and the noble animal; and what easy, equable every courser distinguished by his own peculiar motion to him is afterwards a charge over a character of shape and form-yet all blending wide level plain, with nothing in the way but harmoniously as they crown the mount; so hills and dales of merry England have been a few regiments of flying Frenchmen! The that a painter would only have to group and colour them as they stand, nor lose, if able to the best riding-school to her gentlemen-her catch them, one of the dazzling lights or deep- gentlemen who have not lived at home at ease ening shadows streamed on them from that but, with Paget, and Stewart, and Seymour, and Cotton, and Somerset, and Vivian, have sunny, yet not unstormy sky. You read in books of travels and romances, left their hereditary halls, and all the peaceful of Barbs and Arabs galloping in the desert-pastimes pursued among the silvan scenery, and well doth Sir Walter speak of Saladin at to try the mettle of their steeds, and cross the head of his Saracenic chivalry; but take swords with the vaunted Gallic chivalry; and our word for it, great part of all such descrip- witness the skirmish that astonished Napoleon still have they been in the shock victorious; tions are mere falsehood or fudge. Why in the devil's name should dwellers in the desert at Saldanha-the overthrow that uncrowned him at Waterloo ! always be going at full speed? And how can that full speed be any thing more than a slow heavy hand-gallop at the best, the barbs being up to the belly at every stroke? They are always, it is said, in high condition-but we, who know something about horse-flesh, give that assertion the lie. They have seldom any thing either to eat or drink; they are as lean as church mice; and covered with clammy sweat before they have ambled a league from the tent. And then such a set of absurd riders, with knees up to their noses, like so many tailors riding to Brentford, via the deserts of Arabia! Such bits, such bridles, and such saddles! But the whole set-out, rider and ridden, accoutrements and all, is too much for one's gravity, and must occasion a frequent laugh to the wild ass as he goes braying unharnessed by. But look there! Arabian blood, and British bone! Not bred in and in, to the death of all the fine strong animal spirits but blood intermingled and interfused by twenty crosses, nature exulting in each successive produce, till her power can no further go, and in yonder glorious grey,

"Gives the world assurance of a horse!"

have said, Mr. North, I cannot understand the "Well, do you know, that, after all you passion and the pleasure of fox-hunting. It seems to me both cruel and dangerous.”

Cruelty! Is their cruelty in laying the rein on their necks, and delivering them up to the transport of their high condition-for every throbbing vein is visible at the first full burst of that maddening cry, and letting loose to their What danger but of breaking their own legs, delight the living thunderbolts? Danger! necks, or backs, and those of their riders? And what right have you to complain of that, lying all your length, a huge hulking fellow, snoring and snorting half-asleep on a sofa, sufficient to sicken a whole street? What

though it be but a smallish, reddish-brown, sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, and passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue? till he is run in upon-once, perhaps, in the After the first Tally-ho, Reynard is rarely seen, whole run, skirting a wood, or crossing a comwind of horses, to a storm of canine musicmon. It is an Idea that is pursued, on a whirlworthy, both, of the largest lion that ever leaped among a band of Moors, sleeping at midnight by an extinguished fire on the African sands. There is, we verily believe it, nothing Foxy in the Fancy of one man in all that glorious field of Three Hundred. Once off and away-while wood and welkin rings-and nothing is feltnothing is imaged in that hurricane flight, but scorn of all obstructions, dikes, ditches, drains, brooks, palings, canals, rivers, and afl the impediments reared in the way of so many rejoicing madmen, by nature, art, and science, in an inclosed, cultivated, civilized, and Christian country. There they go-prince and peer, The proof of the pudding is in the eating of baronet and squire-the nobility and gentry of 1; and where, we ask, were the British cavalry England, the flower of the men of the earth, ever overthrown? And how could the great each on such a steed as Pollux never reined, north-country horse-coupers perform their con-nor Philip's warlike son-for could we imagine

Form the Three Hundred into squadron, or squadrons, and in the hand of each rider a sabre alone, none of your lances, all bare his breast but for the silver-laced blue, the gorgeous uniform of the Hussars of England-confound all cuirasses and cuirassiers!-let the trumpet sound a charge, and ten thousand of the proudest of the Barbaric chivalry be opposed with spear and scimitar-and through their snow-ranks will the Three Hundred go like thaw-splitting them into dissolution with the noise of thunder.

FYTTE SECOND.

We are always unwilling to speak of ourselves, lest we should appear egotistical-for egotism we detest. Yet the sporting world must naturally be anxious to know something of our early history-and their anxiety shall therefore be now assuaged. The truth is, that we enjoyed some rare advantages and opportunities in our boyhood regarding field sports, and grew up, even from that first great era in every Lowlander's life, Breeching-day, not only a fisher but a fowler; and it is necessary that we enter into some interesting details.

There had been from time immemorial, it was understood, in the Manse, a duck-gun of very great length, and a musket that, according to an old tradition, had been out both in the Seventeen and Forty-five. There were ten boys of us, and we succeeded by rotation to gun or musket, each boy retaining possession for a single day only; but then the shooting season continued all the year. They must have been of admirable materials and workmanship; for neither of them so much as once burst during the Seven Years' War. The musket, who, we have often since thought, must surely rather have been a blunderbuss in dis

she received her discharge; so much so indeed, that it was reckoned creditable for the smaller boys not to be knocked down by the recoil. She had a very wide mouth-and was thought by us "an awfu' scatterer;" a qualification which we considered of the very highest merit. She carried any thing we choose to put into her-there still being of all her performances

Bucephalus here, ridden by his own tamer, Alexander would be thrown out during the very first burst, and glad to find his way dismounted to a village alehouse for a pail of meal and water. Hedges, trees, groves, gardens, orchards, woods, farmhouses, huts, halls, mansions, palaces, spires, steeples, towers, and temples, all go wavering by, each demigod seeing, or seeing them not, as his winged steed skims or labours along, to the swelling or sinking music, now loud as a near regimental band, now faint as an echo. Far and wide over the country are dispersed the scarlet runners-and a hundred villages pour forth their admiring swarms, as the main current of the chase roars by, or disparted runlets float wearied and all astray, lost at last in the perplexing woods. Crash goes the top-timber of the fivebarred gate-away over the ears flies the exrough-rider in a surprising somerset-after a succession of stumbles, down is the gallant Grey on knees and nose, making sad work among the fallow-Friendship is a fine thing, and the story of Damon and Pythias most affecting indeed-but Pylades eyes Orestes on his back sorely drowned in sludge, and tenderly leaping over him as he lies, claps his hands to his ear, and with a "hark forward, tantivy !" leaves him to remount, lame and at leisureand ere the fallen has risen and shaken him-guise, was a perfect devil for kicking when self, is round the corner of the white villagechurch, down the dell, over the brook and close on the heels of the straining pack, all ayell up the hill crowned by the Squire's Folly. Every man for himself, and God for us all," is the devout and ruling apothegm of the day. If death befall, what wonder? since man and horse are mortal; but death loves better a wide soft bed with quiet curtains and darkened win-a loud and favourable report-balls, buttons, dows in a still room, the clergyman in one corner with his prayers, and the physician in another with his pills, making assurance doubly sure, and preventing all possibility of the dying Christian's escape. Let oak branch smite the too slowly stooping skull, or rider's back not timely levelled with his steed's; let faithless bank give way, and bury in the brook; let hidden drain yield to fore feet and work a sudden wreck; let old coal-pit, with briery | mouth, betray; and roaring river bear down man and horse, to cliffs unscalable by the very Welch goat; let duke's or earl's son go sheer over a quarry twenty feet deep, and as many high; yet "Without stop or stay, down the rocky way," the hunter train flows on; for the music grows fiercer and more savage-lo! all that remains together of the pack, in far more dreadful madness than hydrophobia, leaping out of their skins, under insanity from the scent, for Vulpes can hardly now make a crawl of it; and ere he, they, whipper-in, or any one of the other three demoniacs, have time to look in one another's splashed faces, he is torn into a thousand pieces, gobbled up n the general growl; and smug, and smooth, and dry, and warm, and cozey, as he was an hour and twenty-five minutes ago exactly, in his furze bush in the cover-he is now piecemeal in about thirty distinct stomachs; and is he not, pray, well off for sepulture?

chucky-stanes, slugs, or hail. She had but two faults-she had got addicted, probably in early life, to one habit of burning priming, and to another of hanging fire; habits of which it was impossible, for us at least, to break her by the most assiduous hammering of many a new series of flints; but such was the high place she justly occupied in the affection and admira tion of us all, that faults like these did not in the least detract from her general character. Our delight, when she did absolutely and positively and bonâ fide go off, was in proportion to the comparative rarity of that occurrence; and as to hanging fire-why we used to let her take her own time, contriving to keep her at the level as long as our strength sufficed, eyes shut perhaps, teeth clenched, face girning, and head slightly averted over the right shoulder, till Muckle-mou'd Meg, who, like most other Scottish females, took things leisurely, went off at last with an explosion like the blowing up of a rock.

The "Lang gun," again, was of much gentler disposition, and, instead of kicking, ran into the opposite extreme on being let off, inclining forwards as if she would follow the shot. We believe, however, this apparent peculiarity arose from her extreme length, which rendered it difficult for us to hold her horizontally-and hence the muzzle being attracted earthward, the entire gun appeared to leave the shoulder of the Shooter. That such