devilet, that, if it falls to the ground, cannot rise again, and therefore screams wheeling round the corners and battlements of towers and castles, or far out even of cannon shot, gambles in companies of hundreds, and regiments of a thousand, aloft in the evening ether, within the orbit of the eagle's flight. It seems to boyish eyes, that the creatures near the earth, when but little blue sky is seen between the specks and the wallflowers growing on the coign of vantage-the signal is given to fire; but the devilets are too high in heaven to smell the sulphur. The starling whips with a shrill cry into his nest, and nothing falls to the ground bnt a tiny bit of mossy mortar inhabited by a spider!

fastening a knowing eye on dunce and ne'erdo-weel, holds up, in silent warning, the terror of the taws. Frequent flogging will cowe the spirit of the best man and dog in Britain. Ponto travels now in fear and trembling but a few yards from his tyrant's feet, till, rousing himself to the sudden scent of something smelling strongly, he draws slowly and beautifully, and

the rate of eighteenpence a pound to his justly irritated owner, on whose farm he had led a long and not only harmless, but honourable and useful life.

"There fix'd, a perfect semicirle stands.” Up runs the Tyro ready-cocked, and, in his eagerness, stumbling among the stubble, when, hark and lo! the gabble of grey goslings, and the bill-protruded hiss of goose and gander! Bang goes the right-hand barrel at Ponto, who now thinks it high time to be off to the tune But the Day of Days arrives at last, when of "ower the hills and far awa'," while the the school-boy, or rather the college boy, return- young gentleman, half-ashamed and half-ining to his rural vacation, (for in Scotland censed, half-glad and half-sorry, discharges the college winters tread close, too close, on the left-hand barrel, with a highly improper curse, heels of academies,) has a gun-a gun in a at the father of the feathered family before him, case-a double-barrel too-of his own-and is who receives the shot like a ball in his breast, provided with a license, probably without any throws a somerset quite surprising for a bird other qualification than that of hit or miss. On of his usual habits, and after biting the dust some portentous morning he effulges with the with his bill, and thumping it with his bottom, sun in velveteen jacket and breeches of the breathes an eternal farewell to this sublunary same-many-buttoned gaiters, and an unker-scene-and leaves himself to be paid for at chiefed throat. "Tis the fourteenth of September, and lo! a pointer at his heels-Ponto, of course-a game-bag like a beggar's wallet at his side-destined to be at eve as full of charity -and all the paraphernalia of an accomplished It is nearly as impossible a thing as we sportsman. Proud, were she to see the sight, know, to borrow a dog about the time the sun would be the "mother that bore him;" the has reached his meridian, on the First Day of heart of that old sportsman, his daddy, would the Partridges. Ponto by this time has sneaked, sing for joy! The chained mastiff in the yard unseen by human eye, into his kennel, and yowls his admiration; the servant lasses uplift coiled himself up into the arms of " tired Nathe pane of their garret, and, with suddenly ture's sweet restorer, balmy sleep." A farmer withdrawn blushes, titter their delight in their makes offer of a colley, who, from numbering rich paper curls and pure night-clothes. Rab among his paternal ancestors a Spanish pointer, Roger, who has been cleaning out the barn, is quite a Dou in his way among the cheepers, comes forth to partake of the caulker; and and has been known in a turnip field to stand away go the footsteps of the old poacher in an attitude very similar to that of setting. and his pupil through the autumnal rime, off Luath has no objection to a frolic over the to the uplands, where-for it is one of the ear-fields, and plays the part of Ponto to perfection. liest of harvests—there is scarcely a single acre of standing corn. The turnip fields are bright green with hope and expectation-and coveys are couching on lazy beds beneath the potato-shaw. Every high hedge, ditchguarded on either side, shelters its own broodimagination hears the whir shaking the dewdrops from the broom on the brae-and first one bird, and then another, and then the remaining number, in itself no contemptible covey, seems to fancy's ear to spring single, or in the clouds, from the coppice brushwood with here and there an intercepting standard tree.

Poor Ponto is much to be pitied. Either having a cold in his nose, or having ante-breakfasted by stealth on a red herring, he can scent nothing short of a badger, and, every other field, he starts in horror, shame, and amazement, to hear himself, without having attended to his points, enclosed in a whirring covey. He is still duly taken between those inexorable knees; out comes the speck-and-span new dog-whip, heavy enough for a horse; and the yowl of the patient is heard over the whole parish. Mothers press their yet unchastised infants to their breasts; and the schoolmaster,

At last he catches sight of a covey basking, and, leaping in upon them open-mouthed, despatches them right and left, even like the famous dog Billy killing rats in the pit at Westminster. The birds are bagged with a gentle remonstrance, and Luath's exploit rewarded with a whang of cheese. Elated by the pressure on his shoulder, the young gentleman laughs at the idea of pointing; and fires away, like winking, at every uprise of birds, near or remote; works a miracle by bringing down three at a time, that chanced, unknown to him, to be crossing, and wearied with such slaughter, lends his gun to the attendant farmer, who can mark down to an inch, and walks up to the dropped pout as if he could kick her up with his foot; and thus the bag in a few hours is half full of feathers; while, to close with eclat the sport of the day, the cunning elder takes him to a bramble bush, in a wall nook, at the edge of the wood, and returning the gun into his hands, shows him poor pussy sitting with open eyes, fast asleep! The pellets are in her brain, and turning herself over, she crunkles out to her full length, like a piece of untwisting Indian rubber, and is dead. The posterior

poach of the jacket, yet unstained by blood, ing birds-young larks, perhaps, walking on the yawus to1.ceive her-and in she goes plump; lea-or young linnets hanging on the broompaws, ears, body, feet, fud, and all-while Luath, down by yonder in the holm lands, where there all the way home to the Mains, keeps snoking are no trees, except indeed that one glorious sinat the red drops oozing through; for well he gle tree, the Golden Oak, and he is guarded by knows, in summer's heat and winter's cold, Glowrer, and then what a most capital chase! the smell of pussy, whether sitting beneath a Stretching herself up with crooked back, as tuft of withered grass on the brae, or burrowed if taking a yawn-off she jumps, with tremenbeneath a snow wreath. A hare, we certainly dous spangs, and tail, thickened with fear and must say, in spite of haughtier sportsman's anger, perpendicular. Youf-youf-youf-go scorn, is, when sitting, a most satisfactory shot. the terriers-head over heels perhaps in their But let us trace no further thus, step by step, fury-and are not long in turning her-and the Pilgrim's Progress. Look at him now-a bringing her to bay at the hedge-root, all finished sportsman-on the moors-the bright ablaze and abristle. A she-devil incarnate!— black boundless Dalwhinnie moors, stretching Hark-all at once now strikes up a trio-Caaway, by long Loch Erricht side, into the dim talani caterwauling the treble-Glowrer taking and distant day that hangs, with all its clouds, the bass-and Tearer the tenor-a cruel conover the bosom of far Loch Rannoch. Is that cert cut short by a squalling throttler. Awaythe pluffer at partridge-pouts who had nearly away along the holm-and over the knowe— been the death of poor Ponto? Lord Kennedy and into the wood-for lo! the gudewife, branhimself might take a lesson now from the dishing a besom, comes flying demented withstraight and steady style in which on the moun-out her mutch down to the murder of her tabby tain brow, and up to the middle in heather, he-her son, a stout stripling, is seen skirting the brings his Manton to the deadly level! More un-potato-field to intercept our flight-and, most erring eye never glanced along brown barrel! formidable of all foes, the Man of the House Finer forefinger never touched a trigger! Fol- himself, in his shirt-sleeves and flail in his low him a whole day, and not one wounded bird. hand, bolts from the barn, down the croft, All most beautifully arrested on their flight by across the burn, and up the brae, to cut us off instantaneous death! Down dropped right from the Manse. The hunt's up-and 'tis a and left, like lead on the heather-old cock and capital steeple chase. Disperse-disperse! hen, singled out among the orphaned brood, as Down the hill, Jack-up the hill, Gill-dive calmly as a cook would do it in the larder from the dell, Kit-thread the wood, Pat--a hunamong a pile of plumage. No random shot dred yards' start is a great matter-a stern within-no needless shot out of distance- chase is always a long chase-schoolboys are covered every feather before stir of finger- generally in prime wind-the old man begins and body, back, and brain, pierced, broken, to puff and blow, and snort, and put his paws shattered! And what perfect pointers! There to his paunch-the son is thrown out by a they stand, as still as death-yet instinct with double of dainty Davy's-and the "sair belife-the whole half dozen! Mungo, the black-grutten mither" is gathering up the torn and tanned-Don, the red-spotted-Clara, the snowwhite-Primrose, the pale yellow-Basto, the bright brown, and Nimrod, in his coat of many colours, often seen afar through the mists like

a meteor.

So much for the Angler's and the Shooter's Progress now briefly for the Hunter's. Hunting, in this country, unquestionably commences with cats. Few cottages without a cat. If you do not find her on the mouse watch at the gable end of the house just at the corner, take a solar observation, and by it look for her on bank or brae-somewhere about the premises-if unsuccessful, peep into the byre, and up through a hole among the dusty divots of the roof, and chance is you see her eyes glittering far-ben in the gloom; but if she be not there either, into the barn and up on the mow, and surely she is on the straw or on the baulks below the kipples. No. Well, then, let your eye travel along the edge of that little wood behind the cottage-ay, yonder she is!-but she sees both you and your two terriers-one rough and the other smooth-and, slinking away through a gap in the old hawthorn hedge in among the hazels, she either lies perdu, or is up a fir-tree almost as high as the magpie's or corby's nest. Now-observe-shooting cats is one thingand hunting them is another-and shooting and hunting, though they may be united, are here treated separately; so, in the present case, the cat makes her escape. But get her watch

tattered remains of Tortoise-shell Tabby, and invoking the vengeance of heaven and earth on her pitiless murderers. Some slight relief to her bursting and breaking heart to vow, that she will make the minister hear of it on the deafest side of his head-ay, even if she have to break in upon him sitting on Saturday night, getting aff by rote his fushionless sermon, in his ain study.

Now, gentle reader, again observe, that though we have now described, con amore, a most cruel case of cat-killing, in which we certainly did play a most aggravated part, some Sixty Years since, far indeed are we from recommending such wanton barbarity to the rising generation. We are not inditing a homily on humanity to animals, nor have we been appointed to succeed the Rev. Dr. Somerville of Currie, the great Patentee of the Safety Double Bloody Barrel, to preach the annual Gibsonian sermon on that subjectwe are simply stating certain matters of fact, illustrative of the rise and progress of the love of pastime in the soul, and leave our readers to draw the moral. But may we be permitted to say, that the naughtiest schoolboys often make the most pious men; that it does not follow according to the wise saws and modern instances of prophetic old women of both sexes, that he who in boyhood has worried a cat with terriers, will, in manhood, commit murder on one of his own species; or that peccadilloes

run away with in carts by colts against turnpike gates-buying bad ballads from young gipsy-girls, who, on receiving a sixpence, give ever so many kisses in return, saying, "Take your change out of that;"-on a borrowed broken-knee'd pony, with a switch-tail-a devil for galloping-not only attending countryraces for a saddle and collar, but entering for and winning the prize-dancing like a devil in barns at kirns-seeing his blooming partner home over the blooming heather, most perilous adventure of all in which virgin-puberty can be involved-fighting with a rival in corduroy breeches, and poll shorn beneath a caup, till his eyes just twinkle through the swollen blue

and, to conclude "this strange eventful history," once brought home at one o'clock in the morning, God knows whence or by whom, and found by the shrieking servant, sent out to listen for him in the moonlight, dead-drunk on the gravel at the gate!

are the progenitors of capital crimes. Nature | castles after wall-flowers and starlings-being allows to growing lads a certain range of wickedness, sans peur et sans reproche. She seems, indeed, to whistle into their ear, to mock ancient females-to laugh at Quakers-to make mouths at a descent man and his wife riding double to church-the matron's thick legs ludicrously bobbing from the pillion, kept firm on Dobbin's rump by her bottom, " ponderibus librata suis,"―to tip the wink to young women during sermon on Sunday-and on Saturday, most impertinently to kiss them, whether they will or no, on high-road or by-path--and to perpetrate many other little nameless enormities. No doubt, at the time, such things will wear rather a suspicious character; and the boy who is detected in the fact, must be punished by pawmy, or privation, or imprisonment from play. But when punished, he is of course left free to resume his atrocious career; nor is it found that he sleeps a whit the less soundly, or shrieks for Heaven's mercy in his dreams. Conscience is not a craven. Groans belong to guilt. But fun and frolic, even when trespasses, are not guilt; and though a cat have nine lives, she has but one Ghost--and that will haunt no house where there are terriers. What! surely if you have the happiness of being a parent you would not wish your only boy--your son and heir-the blended image of his mother's loveliness and his father's manly beauty-to be a smug, smooth, prim, and proper prig, with his hair always combed down on his forehead, hands always unglaured, and without spot or blemish on his white-thread stockings? You would not wish him, surely, to be always moping and musing in a corner with a good book held close to his nose-botanizing with his maiden aunts-doing the pretty at tea-tables with tabbies, in handing round the short-bread, taking cups, and attending to the kettle-telling tales on all naughty boys and girls-laying up his penny a-week pocket-money in a penny pig-keeping all his clothes neatly folded up in an untumbled drawer-having his own peg for his uncrushed hat-saying his prayers precisely as the clock strikes nine, while his companions are yet at blind-man's buff and puffed up every Sabbatheve by the parson's praises of his uncommon memory for a sermon-while all the other boys are scolded for having fallen asleep before Tenthly? You would not wish him, surely, to write sermons himself at his tender years, nay-even to be able to give you chapter and verse for every quotation from the Bible? No. Better far that he should begin early to break your heart, by taking no care even of his Sun- Therefore, bad as boys too often are-and a day clothes-blotting his copy-impiously pin- disgrace to the mother who bore them-the ning pieces of paper to the Dominie's tail, who cradle in which they were rocked-the nurse to him was a second father-going to the fish- by whom they were suckled-the schoolmas ing not only without leave but against orders-ter by whom they were flogged-and the hang bathing in the forbidden pool, where the tailor was drowned-drying powder before the school-room fire, and blowing himself and two crack-sculled cronies to the ceiling-tying kettles to the tails of dogs-shooting an old woman's laying hen-galloping bare-backed shelties down stony steeps-climbing trees to the slenderest twig on which bird could build, and up the tooth-of-time-intended sides of old

Nay, start not, parental reader-nor, in the terror of anticipation, send, without loss of a single day, for your son at a distant academy, mayhap pursuing even such another career. Trust thou to the genial, gracious, and benign vis medicatrix nature. What though a few clouds bedim and deform "the innocent brightness of the new-born day?" Lo! how splendid the meridian ether! What though the frost seem to blight the beauty of the budding and blowing rose? Look how she revives beneath dew, rain, and sunshine, till your eyes can even scarce endure the lustre! What though the waters of the sullen fen seem to pollute the snow of the swan? They fall off from her expanded wings, and, pure as a spirit, she soars away, and descends into her own silver lake, stainless as the water-lilies floating round her breast. And shall the immortal soul suffer lasting contamination from the transient chances of its nascent state-in this, less favoured than material and immaterial things that perish? No-it is undergoing endless transmigrations,-every hour a being differ ent, yet the same-dark stains blotted outrueful inscriptions effaced-many an erasure of impressions once thought permanent, but soon altogether forgotten-and vindicating, in the midst of the earthly corruption in which it is immersed, its own celestial origin, character, and end, often flickering, or seemingly blown out, like a taper in the wind, but all at once self-reillumined, and shining in inextinguishable and self-fed radiance-like a star in heaven.

man by whom it was prophesied they were to be executed-wait patiently for a few years, and you will see them all transfigured-one into a preacher of such winning eloquence, that he almost persuades all men to be Chris tians-another into a parliamentary orator. who commands the applause of listening sen ates, and

"Reads his history in a nation's eyes,"

-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 harp, in a concert of vocal and instrumental music, with Byron, Scott, and Wordsworthone into a great soldier, who, when Wellington is no more, shall, for the freedom of the world, conquer a future Waterloo-another who hoisted his flag on the "mast of some tall ammiral," shall, like Eliab Harvey in the Temeraire, lay two three-deckers on board at once, and clothe some now nameless peak or promontory in immortal glory, like that shining on Trafalgar.

hares, ten or twelve pounds and upwards, who have the food brought to their very mouth in preserves, and are out of breath with five minutes' scamper among themselves-to the middle-sized, hard-hipped, wiry-backed, steellegged, long-winded mawkins of Scotland, that scorn to taste a leaf of a single cabbage in the wee moorland yardie that shelters them, but prey in distant fields, take a breathing every gloaming along the mountain-breast, untired as young eagles ringing the sky for pastime, and before the dogs seem not so much scouring for life as for pleasure, with such an air of freedom, liberty, and independence, do they fling up the moss and cock their fuds in the faces of their pursuers. Yet stanch are they to the spine-strong in bone, and sound in bottom-see, see how Tickler clears that 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

Well, then, after cat-killing comes Coursing. Cats have a look of hares-kittens of leverets -and they are all called Pussy. The terriers are useful still, preceding the line like skirmishers, and with finest noses startling the mawkin from bracken-bush or rush bower, her skylight 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 cry" 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.

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 balloo; 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!

"O heaven! that from our bright and shining years

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 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 pas sions! Now they are all three upon her-and