A VERY useful book has been published by Mr Lancaster of Bond Street in the shape of a Manual of the Art of Shooting, containing minute instructions, illustrated by diagrams, for the benefit of neophytes, with much else which will, we undertake to say, be serviceable to many besides the mere tyro, and to good shots as well as bad ones. To obtain the illustrations, Mr Lancaster was himself photographed in the various attitudes which he wished to represent; and the accessories-birds, rabbits, trees, bushes, &c.—were sketched in afterwards. The drawings are faulty here and there, but not so much so as to interfere with the lesson meant to be conveyed by them. The book comprises much more than these rudiments, but these are its distinguishing features; and as a long interval has elapsed since any similar attempt was made to teach shooting by means of fixed rules, Mr Lancaster's book is entitled to some notice on that account, as well as on its own merits. Many persons will think now, as they thought a hundred years ago, that nobody can learn shooting from a book; while others will be of opinion, as others were in former times, that such lessons may be studied with great practical advantage. This, we repeat, being our own opinion, we shall offer no excuses for plunging at once into the subject without further prelude.

The precise date at which the use of the fowling-piece for sporting purposes became general in this country it is impossible to

determine.

That there was a time when sportsmen shot sitting would have been tolerably clear from the particular distinction which during many years was accorded to the art of shooting flying, had we no other evidence to guide us. But Daniel, in his Rural Sports,' published in 1801, expressly states that shooting flying was unknown in the reign of Charles I., when gentlemen all practised "what is now called poaching." Yet, to set against this, Sir Walter Scott, a pretty good authority on such subjects, has a scene in Woodstock,' of the date 1650, which constrains us to believe that Roger Wildrake, at all events, was able to shoot birds upon the wing. "Wildrake had been shooting that morning, and some game lay upon the table. He selected a woodcock's feather," &c. Now he could not very well have shot woodcocks sitting: still, some sixty years after this date, Sir Roger de Coverley, among other reasons for describing one of his neighbours as a very worthy man, mentions that he shoots flying-which seems to imply that down to that date there were many sportsmen who did not. And it is remarkable that all through the eighteenth century, in all the poems and essays upon shooting of which it was prolific, it is always spoken of as the art of shooting flying, as if either the practice or the tradition of a different style of shooting still lingered.

The earliest piece on this subject with which I am acquainted is a heroic poem entitled 'Ptery

plegia,' by the Rev. Abraham Markland, who had been a Fellow of St John's, Oxford, and was a Prebendary of Westminster, and master of St Croix, near Winchester. This was written in 1727, and it is curious to find that the writer treats his subject much after the manner of Mr Lancaster. The versification is about on a par with that in which the battle of Blenheim was celebrated by gentlemen who acted as such admirable foils for "The Campaign." But all lessons were conveyed in verse in those days, and if the teacher was not a poet, the 'mere fact that he could write in metre at all was enough to ensure him some applause. The master of St Croix was probably thought a very superior person by the squires and parsons of Hampshire. But let him speak for himself :

"Five gen'ral sorts of Flying marks

Th' unlucky Cross Mark, or the Traverse shoot,

By some thought easy, yet admits Dispute,

As the most common practice is, to Fire Before the Bird will nicest time require: For, too much space allow'd, the shot will fly,

All innocent, and pass too nimbly by: Too little space, the Partridge, swift as wind,

Will dart athwart, and bilk her death behind.

This makes the Point so difficult to guess, 'Cause you must be exact in time or miss.

Thus in the Mark which is stil'd Circular,

There's nothing more requir'd but steady Care

T'allow the motion of the Bird, and gain The best and farthest Lineal Point you'

can;

Carrying your Piece around, have Patience till

The Mark's at best extent; then fire and kill."

This sounds very like the advice given by Mr Snodgrass to Mr Winkle when he hands him his duelling-pistol. But the description of a side-shot when the bird is rather bending towards you is really very good.

Mr Lancaster distinguishes between the different kinds of shots, and gives rules for each, but it is needless to say they are much more precise, and, by the aid of his diagrams, much more intelligible, than Mr Markland's. According to this gentleman, his principal motive for rushing into verse was a patriotic one. He

could not bear to see his countrymen outstripped by the French; and then follows this very curious, and, to sportsmen at all events, very interesting statement :

"On this Occasion I have often wondered why the French, of all Mankind, should alone be so expert at the Gun, I had almost said infallible. It's as rare for a profess'd Marksman of that Nation to miss a Bird, as for one of Ours to kill. But, as I have been since inform'd, they owe it to the Excellence of their Education. They are train'd up to it so very young, that they are no more surpris'd or alarm'd with a Pheasant than a Rattle-Mouse. The best FieldPhilosophers living, for they are always Masters of their Tempers."

We suppose the Tory foxhunter would have attributed this national disgrace to the Revolution, and have pointed to the good shots who flourished in England in the reign of Charles II. Had it been said of Scotland, Andrew Fairservice would have certainly attributed it to the "sair and sorrowful Union." But what a revelation! That Britons who have boasted themselves from time immemorial to be the best sportsmen in the world, should at any time have been inferior in any branch of woodcraft to the French whom they were accustomed to despise, and whose eccentricities with horses and guns it has so long been their privilege to ridicule The reason assigned by Mr Markland is also very singular. We should have thought that the sons of the country gentlemen in the days of Squire Western and Squire Allworthy were sent into the woods and stubble almost as soon as they could walk. But Mr Markland was a squarson" who

must have been well acquainted with country life; and though his assertion is a riddle to us, we shall not venture to contradict it.

But the most elaborate dissertation on shooting flying which the eighteenth century produced was written in 1782. It is the work of a gamekeeper, and is really a literary curiosity. I have only seen an imperfect copy of it, but the pages which relate to " taking aim," and to the shape and construction of guns, are complete, and treat of marksmanship, like the poem just quoted, in terms of mathematical precision. It is not for the sake of these, however, that the following passage is extracted, but simply as a specimen of the ambitious English which it was possible for a man to write and publish in the last century. Mr Lemon-such was his name-was not, I suppose, an ordinary gamekeeper; but whatever he was, his attempts at elegance are amusing. He, too, is convinced that there is a great deal to be learned from good rules, and quite scouts the idea that the art of shooting flying can come by nature On this point we may take the opportunity of saying once for all, that no man without some natural aptitude for the gun will ever be made a firstrate shot, either by theory or practice: but he may be made a fair shot perhaps by either; and on this head we recommend Mr Lancaster's remarks at page 100 of his Art of Shooting.' Now hear Mr Lemon :

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"It is impossible for any man to get master of the art of shooting flying (begin his efforts ever so early or be ever so vigilant) before decrepit age steals on him, before the evil days come when he will have no pleasure in his gun, besides that of talking of it, unless he hears or reads lessons upon the causes of missing and rules period or another.”—P. 15. for hitting volant objects, at some

"There is not one bird in threescore, of any species of game you shoot at flying, but is elevating at the

tine you fire at it; and some of them (such as pheasants and partridges) frequently gain sixteen or eighteen inches in altitude, while your gun is in the action of firing and shot flying to the distance of five-and-thirty or forty yards; especially the cock pheasant, which often flies in a direction nearly vertical. Some sportsmen very probably may think that the interval is so short between the igniferous stroke of the lock and the appulse of the shot to an object at forty yards' distance, that a bird has not time to gain any significant space, in its volant progression, in altitude, and that neither difficulty nor disadvantage can accrue to the marksman from the altitudinal celerity of the bird, nor from the defectiveness of his gun, in throwing the center of its charge

under the visual line of aim. But I must beg leave to observe that such notions are erroneous. To be sure, at the beginning of the season, before the birds are ripe in plumosity or arrived at the zenith of their strength, when their celerity is torpid, and they le before your pointers till you spurn them up, their elevation is then of little consequence; and a marksman at this time may, perhaps, with one of the before-mentioned ill-constructed guns, bring down now and then one of these flaccid and immature birds, he may, perhaps, drop one in three or four times shooting, whilst their impuissance renders them incapable of topping a hedge of a dozen foot high. But after the elapsion of a few weeks when their plumage is maturated, and they are made so wary by inces sant harassing that they will not bear the presence of your pointers a moment, nor permit your approach within five-and-twenty or thirty yards of them before they spring; and when their fear and strength of wing carry them off, with a rapid celerity, in lines elevating, probably, to five-and-thirty or forty degrees, then you may possibly shoot ten times with your inhabile piece before you draw blood or break a feather; and after a long day's sterile fatigue, go home with an empty bag, grumbling out the trite phrase, 'The birds are exceedingly wild,' and never once suspect that the defectiveness of your gun were the cause of missing them."

Besides Mr Lemon and Mr Markland, we have numerous other poems and essays on the George I. and George II., and the same subject during the reigns of first part of the reign of George III. But they are more descriptive than didactic, and do not compete in any degree with the two we have already named. Of the others, the best, like Pterythe productions of plegia,' are One is Partridge clergymen. Shooting,' an eclogue, by the Rev. Francis Fawkes, vicar of Orpington, in Kent, dated 1767, and addressed to the Hon. Charles Yorke a kindred spirit, it appears, but who oniy three years after

wards had the misfortune to cut his throat. Another is on 'Grouse Shooting,' by the Rev. William Greenwood, Fellow of St John's, Cambridge, vicar of Solihull, in Warwickshire, and of St Nicholas's, Warwick, published in 1787. There is not much to choose between them in point of literary merit, as neither possesses any at all. But the first is interesting as a picture of old-fashioned partridgeshooting, such as we see in Morland's pictures. Mr Fawkes and his friends began at dawn and left off at noon, when they doubtless returned to a very comfortable midday dinner, to be followed by the well-earned bowl of punch and soothing clay, when they would fight their battles over again, and afterwards take a stroll in the cool of the evening to look at the kennels, or to see how the apples were getting on in the old orchard. The reader will remember that hare-hunting at this time occupied a much more prominent position among field-sports than it does at present; and we observe from Mr Fawkes's verses that shooting a hare was considered at that time by many persons as an unsportsmanlike action.

So it

is still, in some parts of England where coursing is the fashion, and most of the farmers keep greyhounds. ""Taint altogether manly," said a sporting butcher to the present writer, as he picked up a hare which ho had shot under strong temptation; and it is in this spirit that Mr Fawkes denounces the practice. He calls it ungenerous, and perhaps thought it wicked, to cut short the animal's natural career with the gun. Hares and hounds were made for each other, according to his simple philosophy; and to shoot the creature which was clearly intended to be hunted was flying in the face of Providence. Supposing this theory to be correct, we may discern the finger of Heaven in the Hares and Rabbits Bill, and understand for the first time that Sir William Harcourt may have been only the instrument of a righteous retribution.

I turn from the eighteenth-century shooters with regret. I like the pictures of them, with their long-skirted, heavy shooting jack ets, red waistcoats, low-crowned hats, and long single-barrelled guns -of course, flint and steel, which had to be cleaned after every twenty shots. There is one engraving of such a man I always stop to look at. He has left off shooting as usual about mid-day, and is having a glass of ale in the sanded parlour of a roadside public. His bag including, I think, a hare which he has been unmanly enough to murder-is turned out upon the floor; his gun stands up against the fireplace; and he is leaning back in his chair apparently just pleasantly fatigued, and about to wipe his brow with an ample pocket-handkerchief. I myself am the happy owner of a gun which might have belonged to such a man. It came to me from

VOL. OXLVI.-NO. DCCCLXXXVIII.

a very old bencher of the Temple, who died at a great age more than twenty years ago, and might have shot partridges before the present century began. It is a flint and steel, the lock apparently as good. as ever, and has a very long single barrel, slightly bell-shaped at the muzzle, according to the fashion of the day, which, however, our friend Mr Lemon, the gamekeeper, condemns most vigorously. From this to the hammerless guns which figure in all Mr Lancaster's illustrations, what a stride!

Daniel, also a clergyman, though he held no benefice, and died within the rules of the King's Bench, gives some directions of the same kind as the above, and quotes with approval a poem of Pye, the laureate of the day, from which it appears that shooting flying had not yet wholly emerged from the semibarbarous stage in which men did not scruple to "shoot into the brown

"

"Oh, let your breast such slaughterous views disdain, And scorn the triumph of a casual

aim."

I have not thought it necessary to run through all the treatises on shooting which have appeared during the present century, as my main object has been to show what was written about shooting flying when it first became common; and at what an early date rules very similar in principle to Mr Lancaster's were prescribed. It is the first part of Mr Lancaster's book which is really the most valuable. The second is made up in great part of correspondence which has already appeared in print, and in which, it may be, there is a little too much about Mr Lancaster himself. But the illustrations, with the short notes appended to them, will be found

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