worked its hypotheses was the beacon which lighted Labour to its haven. Did toil or trouble lack succour or refreshment, biography had its panacea of successful cases, and story its tale of " moving accidents" to supply a specific. Letters, which were both the parents and the nurses of the infant arts, should be permitted to share their triumph. The pen that cleared the wilderness of ignorance, and substituted "figs for thistles," is the most slighted of all the implements of men's skill and cunning. "We don't honour literature." It is soothly said, and "there's the rub." George the Fourth made Walter Scott a baronet ; intellect has done the state as good service as did the Waverley Novels, without the Abbotsford case being followed as a precedent. Art is but the application of knowledge

"The wing wherewith we fly to Heaven;"

and learning is the child of letters. Shall mind in the middle of the nineteenth century ask in vain to be placed on a footing with the furnace and the loom? Let the new year give to such a question an emphaticNo!

The existing agitation-I will not say distress-among the proprictors and cultivators of the land must have a sinister effect upon the rural spirit generally; and yet the country-at least the social aspect of it-betrays no signs of any decline in the national taste for field sports. To come to this conclusion I do not take into account the epidemic which rages for racing and steeple-chasing. I should as soon pronounce the hectic of fever on the cheek an evidence of a robust health. What I do mean is, that the popular characteristic is as strongly marked, if not more so, than ever. We will take cricket, for example. Last summer that fine manly game might be seen in all its various phases, from the "pride, pomp, and circumstance" of the princely park to the humble circle of the village green, stirring the hearts and limbs alike of peers and peasants. I happened to pass Audley End, one afternoon, when the cricket match patronized by Lord Braybroke was in all its best rustic array and the friendly contest at its climax, and a more picturesque and animating sight cannot be conceived. Who says Old England is the pandemonium of the blue devils?-where, as Pope tells us, we may see"The judge, to dance, his brother sergeants call, The senator at cricket urge the balls."

Amen. So be it ever. The bat is not yet a betting agent; odds on stumps and wickets are not yet quoted at Tattersall's. The club system is almost universally applied to cricket. Members play together, with professional additions occasionally, or they play against other clubs: miscellaneous matches are not much countenanced. There is no risk of encounter ing a discreditable person; there is no hazard of being associated with a dangerous companion at the rendezvous of any company of respectable men elected into one of these societies. I hail as one of the healthiest signs of our time the extension of the principle of clubs to the social intercourse of life generally. There is excellent philosophy, and a valuable moral to boot, in the old saw, "tell me who you go with, and I'll tell you who you are.' When the system of elective association is adopted on the turf-as adopted it surely will be at no

distant day-racing will be purified, if not absolutely purged, of the offence which now wins for it a measure of popular odium that ought by no means to attach to a great national sport. I think the chase might be a little more exclusive, with advantage to itself. Money is certainly no criterion of character; nevertheless there is a sort of conventional respectability attaching to those who "pay their way." For this reason it would be convenient to bring about an understanding, that it was expected no one in the condition of a gentlemen would make a practice of hunting with packs of hounds supported by subscription without contributing to their funds. It is good to be liberal no doubt, but I cannot see the service of establishing the precedent that the paying members of hunting clubs, and the non-paying strangers who may think fit to place themselves on the free list, should meet in the field upon the same footing.

HANDS, NOT HEARTS.

BY FOXGLOVE.

"Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to choose a man? Master Shallow."

Give me the spirit,

Be not disappointed, fair readers, if indeed ye ever condescend to gratify your maternal failing by peeping between the pages of "that odious Sporting Magazine, that is always littering about on the writingtable;" be not disappointed when on reading this title you find instead of a gentle love tale, such as you delight to con, that those "eternal horses are again on the tapis," and that, as usual, the orange-blossom must yield precedence to the blooming evergreen, the plant that proverbially will only cease to flower when your sweet influence ceases to control mankind. Fain would I pen a love tale for your edification; but when the head is silvered, and the form rotund, when the carmine that adorned our youthful cheeks has settled permanently in the nose, we acknowledge to middle age, and are voted by mere boys to be insufferable old bores, it better becomes us to prose over the mahogany than to whisper nonsense on an ottoman; and leaving the young ones to be happy in their own way, we grapple some congenial old boy by the button, and hold on to him till he has received the full benefit of our experience and observation.

when

"Hands, not hearts," is the shortest sentence I can think of to describe what we so often see in the hunting-field. Why is it that there are scores of men like " young Harry with his beaver up," expressly formed "to turn or wind a fiery Pegasus, and witch the world with noble horsemanship," having good seats, fine hands, capital horses, and plenty of them, with all the means and appliances to "make the mare to go;" and yet if they were turned out by themselves with a pack of fox-hounds and a moderately holding scent, would infallibly lose them in the first two

miles? Nay, with all the advantage of others to show them the way, and the assistance of the very excellent macadamised roads which this favoured country can boast, it is as much as they can do to muddle through a run somehow, coming up some ten minutes after a good fox has been killed, delighted with the whole thing, and of course making the run exactly their ten minutes longer than the reality. It must be want of “heart”-mind, I do not mean courage; far be it from me to impugn the valour of nine out of every ten men who wear the garb of the chase; many of them would (indeed many of them have) as unhesitatingly charge a battery as a bull-finch, or ride as gallantly up to a horse of ruthless Sikhs as they would to a flight of stout oaken rails of the sort that may be termed undeniable; but this is not it. Having got over the obstacles between them and the hounds, having jumped this stile or plumbed that ditch, they do not know what to do or where to go, and whilst they are making three fields the hounds have made four- -a progressive ratio which ere long places them where the little boat was, a long way a-stern." Example is better than precept, and I can perhaps give a clearer idea of my meaning by describing two men of my acquaintance, both passionately fond of hunting, but with one exception as widely different as it is possible to be, and exemplifying in their style of getting over a country the two extremes of hands and hearts.

A pack of hounds are drawing a gorse in a flying country. The whole thing is a picture: large fields, large fences, a great proportion of grass, and not another covert for miles. Out of that large assemblage of sportsmen, look at the man riding the clever dark chestnut with one white leg. Say, is he not the very pattern of a workman? From his faultless coat, his irreproachable leathers, his praiseworthy boots, down to the very rowels of his spurs, everything is exactly what should be worn by a first-rate horseman and hard rider, who is at the same time a perfect gentleman and a man of good taste. So much for the rider ; now look at his horse. Blood, bone, and beauty, with the tackle from the large easy yet powerful double-bridle, to the wide stirrup-irons, in which you cannot suggest an improvement. If with no other data to start from than what you now see, you were required to name one against the field, your nomination would be Sir Charles Carter versus all England. See him walk his horse up to that half-gap half-fence, that with two ditches separates him from the field where the master of the hounds is. How he handles his instruments! The chestnut horse puts his hind feet exactly on the solitary spot of sound ground, and with his second spring clears the further ditch, and lights upon his hind legs in the next field. Sir Charles's elastic seat is undisturbed, and his hands well down give you an idea of what sportsmen call "give and take."

But here comes the cheeriest yeoman in England, honest John Downright, or Farmer Downright, as he is generally called. He, too, splutters over the same place to have a word with Sir Charles, who, by the way, is uncommonly popular amongst the farmers; but what a different system of equitation is adopted by the jolly yeoman! He rides with a snafflebridle, and with reins and whip in one hand, lays hold of the brown mare with a grasp of iron. He wears mahogany tops, and somewhat punishing spurs he calls them "toasting-forks "-drabs, and a green coat, with a rosy face that does your heart good on a hunting-morning, surmounting a well-filled frame of some fourteen stone or thereabouts, of

which his nag receives the benefit of every pound. Run your eye over the brown mare-long and low, with ragged hips, a plain long head, and thin tail, middling shoulders, but uncommonly thick through, short flat legs like iron, and good sizeable feet. John has hunted with these hounds for twenty years, and although it must be allowed that he has had his share of falls indeed, in a farmers' run two years ago he confessed to five-yet where the hounds are, no matter what the country is, no matter how severe the pace, there is Farmer Downright; if not actually in the same field, always somewhere handy, as he calls it. Nobody will accuse him of being a good horseman; a good rider is altogether another story. His seat is of the washball order, and his grasp is more vigorous than sensitive. But he "rams 'em along," that is his secret. He knows what hounds are doing and when to gallop, and never being shook off during the first five minutes, the rest is all plain sailing. He says himself, "Any fool can live with 'em, if so be as he can get alongside after they've gone three fields." He is a hard, thrusting rider, and is at this moment favouring Sir Charles-who complains of a young one he has, not being so perfect as he could wish at his timber-with one of his maxims: "Ride him at the postess, S'Charles; they always rise when you ride 'em at the postess.'

But hark! a holloa; too-too-too: there goes the horn; away, away, away!" forrard, forrard, get forrard!" and before the good ones are over the fence, and the field irretrievably jammed into the hand-gate at the top of the gorse, the hounds are streaming away over the next enclosure but one, with a field's start of every soul except the second whip. Never mind, it's all down hill to the first fence; and now, if ever, is the time to gallop and jump. Sir Charles and Downright are both clear of the covert: the latter, smashing a strong rail in his exit, is now blazing down the hill like a steam-engine broke loose; but let us rein our imaginary steed, and instead of riding him recklessly forward amongst "the customers," impose on him the easier task of watching the progress of our friend the baronet.

He has turned his horse out of the crowd, and popped him over a thick black-looking fence with a wide ditch at the shortest notice; there is no mistake about his being a good horseman; and now he is clear of the crowd at the top of a fifty-acre field; certainly the ridge and furrow is against him, and the mole-hills innumerable, all disagreeable, to say the least of it, when making play down hill; but the fence at the bottom is quite practicable, and the hounds are racing along the meadow beyond it, if anything turning slightly in his favour. Why does Cheek the dealer, who sold Sir Charles that very chestnut for two hundred-why does he indulge in a roguish chuckle as he gives him the go-by on a well-bred, bad-shouldered, five-year-old, with a snaffle-bridle and a gaganything but a pleasant mount over uncertain ground? What right indeed had such a brute as that to be in front of the chestnut horse at all? Charles, Sir Charles, you took twice as long to get to the bottom of that hill as you should have done. Your riding over the ridge, and furrows, and the mole hills was a display of the science of equitation, but it did not get you "forward." However, here we are at the fence, and Sir Charles has it like a man; and rising into enthusiasm when he finds himself on a flat nice piece of turf beyond, he gets hold of the chestnut and warms up into a very fair gallop, though nothing like the pace some

Sir

men would get out of so capital a mount. A lucky turn brings him quite within reach of the hounds again, and going in and out of a narrow spinney close behind Tom Whipcord the huntsman, he has now an opportunity of distinguishing himself; there is a capital scent, and over the next grass field every horse must lose somewhat of his advantage-in fact, were it not for the fences few hunters would ever have a chance in a quick thing; but this fence is fair though large, the take-off sound and good, and the uncertainty beyond nothing out of the common; fifty horses might jump it a-breast. Why did Sir Charles pull his out of his stride, to follow Tom Whipcord, instead of flying it handsomely alongside of him? Being a merciful and humane man, he gave Tom a little room, and thus forty yards at least have been lost; opening the next hand-gate, because forsooth the fence is a double, places some eight or ten fellows in front of him, and this becomes a serious consideration at the next place, which is really impracticable-but in one spot, and where every one must follow. Changing his mind for a rail instead of a hairy, blindish bull-finch, the rail on a nearer inspection proving to be unnegotiable from the poached state of the ground, and having to go back to the original place, puts Sir Charles so far behind that a friendly lane and the chance of a ruck proves a temptation too strong to be resisted, and this unfortunate proceeding ensures his final discomfiture. True, he saw the run, as people call it when they give an account of themselves; but from that lane till some forty minutes afterwards, when the hounds had eaten and digested their fox, he never caught a glimpse of one of them; the intervening time being spent in a succession of disappointments and hopes deferred. He was always riding round them; now he sunk the wind, but the stout good fox went gallantly in its teeth, and of course the pace was better than ever: now he hung towards a tempting covert, and tried to bring his knowledge of wood-craft to his assistance, but in vain; "disdaining to hang in the wood, through he raced," and a gallant straight-running fox had been broken up some ten minutes before he made his appearance, doomed to hear the egotistical though enthusiastic remarks of the happy few who had " gone in front from end to end."

Yet Sir Charles is a good sportsman, and as fond of the thing as possible. I believe that from day to day he makes good resolutions for the future, and that he lives on, season after season, expecting in some future run to have the best of it; and in the mean time it is a pity he should have lost so good a one as this, for good it certainly was, as Farmer Downright, who saw the whole thing from end to end, assured He had had two falls, and I did hear tumbled off once; but he never let the old mare go, and was up and at it again like a good one. He made his play at first, and having once got on good terms with the hounds was enabled to ease his mare from time to time afterwards as it suited him; but as Cheek the dealer says, "He aint much of a 'orseman aint Muster Downright, he's got no 'ands, but he's a uncommon 'ard'earted man over a country."

me.