old. It was in the forest of Glenartney, near the head of Strathearn, that the late Prince Consort, during the royal visit to Scotland in September, 1842, stalked his first stag, and stalked it too in the genuine Highland style. Mr. Campbell of Monzie undertook to initiate His Royal Highness in the "curious sport," and discharged his office to admiration. An amusing incident, which occurred at a crisis when deer were suspected to be approaching, has been recorded by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder : "As it was absolutely essential that silence should be preserved, Monzie whispered to the old forester, 'Hold the Prince back, Donald, whilst I creep to the brow and see where the deer are.' 'How am I to do that?' replied Donald Cameron. 'Just lay hold of his arm, if the deer come forward, until it is time to fire.' 'Haud the Prince!' said Donald, with a degree of astonishment which, forty years' deerstalker as he was, had nearly deprived him of his presence of mind. 'Haud the Prince! I'll no do that. Ye maun just grip him yoursel, Monzie, and I'll look ower the broo.' Monzie was obliged to consent to old Donald's arrangement, and to ensure success was compelled to take the necessary liberty with the Prince's arm. The herd did not come forward, but turned back round the hill.”* The Prince soon afterwards brought down his deer, and was very proud of it. Writing to Prince Leiningen, he described the sport as "one of the most fatiguing but one of the most interesting of pursuits." Deer-hunting in any form is a very costly affair. The rent of a forest and contingent outlay cannot be realised by the market value of the animals killed. In the best of cases, I understand, the produce scarcely covers what may be termed in unsportsmanlike phrase the "working expenses," composed of wages, &c. As regards the moors, however, matters are generally on a somewhat different scale. Despite the heavy rents-which now form a most important element in the value of Highland estates-it often happens when seasons are favourable that moor lessees succeed in at least making the two ends meet. Nay, speculators find their account by acting as middle men between proprietors and sportsmen. But bad seasons are now more than ever to be dreaded, for of late years the moors have been repeatedly devastated by what is called the grouse disease, the cause of which seems as yet to have baffled discovery. The visitations of this distemper have taken place at regular intervals of half a dozen years, beginning with 1849; so that, according to this ratio, we may expect its return (which Fate forfend) in 1873 or 1874. It must be traced, I suspect, * “Memorial of the Royal Progress in Scotland," p. 393. (Edin. 1843.) to atmospheric influences-in other words, exceptional and protracted disturbance of the due temperature-acting prejudicially on the natural food of the grouse; and in this view I may note the opinion of certain meteorologists that within the last three or four decades the climate of Scotland has been undergoing gradual deterioration, by which "we are gradually losing the benefit of a prolonged summer." But I have no wish to dogmatise on the subject. And now a closing reference to the waters on which the "honest angler" pursues his darling vocation. It is to be regretted that seasons have been frequent in which the salmon rivers of Scotland have proved comparatively barren in an angling point of view. But this has been entirely owing to the long droughts, which prevented the fish ascending; and on every occasion of a flood it brought them up in shoals. The extension of field drainage along the course of a river, especially in a hilly country, has the effect of rendering such droughts more felt by carrying off the rainfall or surface water too rapidly. The paucity of sport and of captures by the net need not, therefore, have given rise to so many theoretic propositions for the improvement of the fisheries. To all appearance our existing regulations are working well. Enlightened legislation is bearing good fruit. We find the individual weight of salmon unmistakably on the increase, and under ordinary circumstances the fish plentiful. The summer of 1872 has shown on the Tay, the first of Scottish rivers, that while the water was kept in ordinary depths by the rains, the supply of salmon, grilse, and sea trout proved abundant; and angling was successful after the nets came off in the end of August. For these reasons rash interference with present arrangements ought to be deprecated as much by the lovers of sport as by the river proprietary themselves. LIFE IN LONDON. II.—LITERARY AND ARTISTIC SOCIETY. EW men Everything of note stands out in in the public eye. The newspapers from day to day contain such close and detailed narratives of the world's progress, that people imagine there is no room for private memoranda. Even if a club receives at its board a distinguished guest, some one is sure to tell the outer world what he said and how he looked. Mr. Stanley dined at the Garrick, and his speech was reported. Mark Twain went to the Savage Club, and some clever person described in a country paper "An Evening with the Jumping Frog." I wonder no one has yet been found to report the "At Homes," and receptions of Literary Bohemia. The public has a continual craving for personal news, and journalists are ministering to this appetite more and more. Do I blame them? Not when they keep within reasonable and proper bounds. It is difficult to draw the line, but I think a man should be permitted to stand on his own ground. The gossip of the press has no business to surround the portrait which he hits off in type with a family group of persons and things that ought to be studies apart from the chief character. If a man becomes famous as an actor, author, painter, he cannot help it; it is not fair that the world should be told he squints, and is separated from his wife; that in his early days he was insolvent; that his father was hanged; that he gets drunk and leaves his boots on the doorstep. I offer this as a suggestion to any lady or gentleman who may be making notes or keeping diaries. There may be some who are not borne down by the idea that so much is published that there is nothing left to tell in a posthumous book on men and manners. Fifty years hence a carefully kept diary, the work of an observant person in the world of letters, would be full of curious and lasting interest, even if everything that had been published by the journals were eliminated. There is so much to see, and so much to tell. For example, when England has become a republic, or despotic monarchy, what a curious illustration of changing views and manners would be found in the Lyceum story of Charles I.; how in an age of professed Liberalism, in the days of household suffrage and the ballot, Charles I. was held up as a blessed martyr, and Cromwell as a timeserving villain and impostor; how the gallery applauded to the echo the King's withering sneers at the Protector's patriotism; and how the proprietor of the theatre was an American citizen, father of the wonderful Bateman children; how the author of the piece was an Irishman; and the chief actor a man who at one bound had come to the front as the leading player of his day. Then the diary might describe how the Prince and Princess of Wales went to see the play; how the ladies of the party applauded, and how His Royal Highness observed a strict neutrality, neither applauding nor expressing dissent, like a discreet and wise Prince, careful to do nothing that might not become the heir to the throne. The same modern Pepys might then revert back to the Prince's visit, before his illness, to the Gallery of Illustration, to see Mark Lemon as Falstaff. There would be much to note in this, of the Princess's laughter at Hal's rogueries, and what their Royal Highnesses said to Mark Lemon at the close of the entertainment. What Mr. Toole said to the Prince over a game at billiards, which amused His Royal Highness so much; how Carlyle looked while strolling about Cheyne Walk, and what he said to an obtrusive stranger; how "George Eliot" and her husband work at their books in the same room, and what the lady said to this modern Pepys concerning the real people who are described in "Adam Bede;" what Mr. Stanley said, over a cigar, that was not published in his book, and how Her Majesty the Queen received him in Scotland; how Artemus Ward used to make dry jokes between his dry hacking fits of coughing, and what Mark Twain said at a private dinner about a Piccadilly publisher; how the writer met Mr. Schenck at the height of the Alabama dispute, and sat down to dinner with him, knowing that he had just received "The American Answer;" how a popular journalist who had got hold of this fact tried to pump the American diplomatist, and then in fun, but with an earnest twinkle of the eye, proposed to waylay him and rob him of his papers; what Mr. Tennyson said to Longfellow, and why a certain critic calls Walt Whitman the Browning of America; how a popular dramatist invited a friend to meet Henry Irving, and said. "Come and dine-Charles I. is here; don't let it be known, or people may think I have an execution in the house." If some chiel is making notes for the future on this programme, with the details well and truthfully put in, our grandchildren will lament that they did not live in our days, just as some people in the present day foolishly wish they could have ante-dated their births. Trust me, in spite of Mr. Jacox's compilation of out-of-the-way notes selected to prove that literary society is dull, stupid, and arrogant, it is one of the pleasantest features of life in London. Men who knew the Garrick smoking room in the old days, and who have the entrée into real literary society in the present, will have a thousand examples in opposition to those which Mr. Jacox has cited. I dined with two old men the other day; one of them had lived in America forty years; the other had been all his life of seventy-five years in England; they were both commercial in their training and instincts; yet the two incidents of their lives which seemed to be best remembered were, the one dining among literary men at the Cock and the Rainbow forty-five years ago, and the other spending an evening with some literary friends in the north, and sitting next to Nathaniel Hawthorne, "the Scott of America." It is absurd to deny that literary society has a special charm. I envied my ancient friend his evening with the author of the "Scarlet Letter." Do you remember Hawthorne's suggestive note for a subject ?—“An old man, on a summer day, sits on a hill-top, or on the observatory of his house, and sees the sun's light pass from one object to another connected with the events of his past life, as the school house, the place where his wife lived in her maidenhood-its setting beams falling in the churchyard." There is a freemasonry in literary and artistic society which exists among no other class. 'Shop" is not tabooed. It is the proper topic of conversation. The new play, the new book, the new picture -what could afford more delightful conversation among writers, actors, artists! The successful actor in the successful play, he will talk about his part, and show you how he has worked up the main idea; the artist whose picture made a hit at the last Academy exhibition, he will talk to you of the work upon which he is engaged for next year; the author, he will explain upon what principles he constructs his new theory of light; or the novelist, he will inform you where the story really opens, and what inspired the leading idea; while the special correspondent, he represents a new institution, since Southey and De Quincey weighed literary society in the balance of their stupendous intellects, and found it wanting. imagine the "Opium Eater" and the "Lake Poet" were too great for the minnows that floated round them. Moreover, to enjoy literary society you must be content to listen; you must help others to talk, draw them out, play upon them like instruments, know their stops, and understand the nature of their music. I am inclined to believe |