per cent worse than usual. "Then the two men went into the turnips," writes Mr Trollope, "and oach swore at his luck as he missed his birds; and there are some frames of mind," he adds, "in which a man can neither shoot partridges, nor play billiards, nor recollect a card at whist." In other words, most men are liable to have their "bad days," which, however, are easily accounted for by any one of the above misfortunes. But there are bad days which cannot be so explained, and these it is which have often caused me great perplexity. I will give an instance, Some years ago I went to shoot with a relation in Hampshire early in September. It was a forward season; the harvest was all in, and the birds were strong. There were only he and I, and the first day we killed, over dogs, twenty brace and a half; the second, sixteen brace; and the third day we took a rest. We

were neither of us knocked up: we were young, in good health, free from care, had only one bottle of claret between us after diner, and one whisky-and-soda in the smoking-room at night. We were both in bed, I should say, by halfpast eleven at the very latest, and woke up each morning as fresh as paint. Now, how was it that on the fourth day of my visit, after an interval of repose, when we went to shoot with a neighbour we both utterly disgraced ourselves, and I myself in particular? In the morning I shot badly; and in the afternoon, when we had got a thirtyacre turnip-field, full of birds, I couldn't touch a feather. The field was made up of little knolls and hollows, where the birds lay splendidly; but in a little time I became positively afraid of them, and prayed that none might get up within shot of me. I wonder

It

whether any of my readers have experienced this sensation. arises when you begin to feel that the birds are thoroughly masters of you, and that it doesn't matter where or how they get up. You shoot just as if you had no shot in your gun, and the best plan is to give it up at once to an attendant, as no amount of "pulling himself together" will ever restore a man who has fallen into this state of hopeless imbecility. The next day my cousin and myself went out again and shot as well as ever, and as we drove home in the cool of the evening through those beautiful Hampshire woods, on the skirts of the New Forest, fresh and green, and bathed in the mellow sunlight of September, we speculated much on this great mystery. What could be the secret of the sudden paralysis which had seized us on the preceding day, and totally disappeared by the next morning? This, however, was not a solitary experience in my own case. I have been incapacitated in this strange and sudden manner some three or four times in my life, and am as far from an explanation of it as ever.

Part II. of Mr Lancaster's book is taken up with matter to which I do not propose to devote further space. Mr Lancaster is a gunmaker, and very naturally, and without any impropriety that I can see, recommends his own guns, his own ideas of measurement, and his own principles of teaching. This is done by means of testimonials in the shape of letters which he has received from customers and pupils, all of course of a highly satisfactory character. There may be a little too much of this. But as every one who writes a book necessarily advertises himself more or less, and recommends his own ideas, we see no reason to find fault with Mr Lancaster on this score.

There has been a good deal written of late years on what is called in the trade "cast-off"; but it seems to me that this is only & new name for what has long been understood by all persons conversant with guns. It only means, after all, that crook in the stock which all guns have more or less. If the stock was absolutely straight, you could not draw a straight line from the eye to the muzzle, unless the butt rested on the cheek, or even then. As it rests on the shoulder, the stock has to be deflected a little towards the eye, so as to bring the barrels in a line with it. It is then said to be cast-off-cast-off, that is, from the line of sight; and each individual, no doubt, may require to have the cast-off adjusted to his own figure. But that is only saying he should be measured for his gun; and I confess I do not understand the reason why so many columns should have been written on the subject.

On the price of guns Mr Lancaster has little to add to what has already appeared in the "Badminton Library." The best guns are the best. That is a maxim which I do not believe it is possible to controvert. But it is with guns as with other articles of merchandise. The vendor is satisfied with smaller profits on a greater number, and consequently can, in some cases, sell a very good gun at a price which, to the uninitiated, seems necessarily to imply a very bad one. To what extent the reduction of price thus made possible may be carried, I am unable to say with any confidence, as I have found gunmakers rather reserved on this subject. But there is a passage in the "Badminton Library," written by Lord Walsingham, whose authority, I presume, is unim

peachable, to which, together with the comments I have heard upon it, I wish to call particular attention. The writer, while maintaining the superiority of the higher-priced guns, and generally condemning the cheaper ones as not to be relied upon at all, makes one notable exception in favour of "the keeper's gun," originally designed and sold by Mr Bland, who has hardly let a year pass without effecting some little improvements in it. The best keeper's gun can now be bought for ten guineas, and, according to Lord Walsingham, it is as good a gun for a certain number of years as if it cost four times the money. Its inferiority consists only in its inability to stand the same amount of wear and tear as a more expensive one. The sportsman who is satisfied with a thousand shots in the season, will find the keeper's gun all that he requires. But if he fires ten thousand, he will find it unequal to the strain-that is, for more than a very few seasons. On pointing this out to Mr Bland, I was met by the somewhat pertinent inquiry whether anybody had ever tried the experiment. Gentlemen, he said, who fire ten thousand shots a season, wouldn't buy a keeper's gun. And as gentlemen who fire only a thousand don't very often do so either, I daresay Mr Bland was right. But the dictum of Lord Walsingham may in turn lead a great many people to reconsider their previous ideas on the question of what a gun should cost. And I confess, as a mere matter of curiosity, I should like to see the keeper's gun have a fair trial in the hands of some impartial judge.

So much for the Art of Shooting. But what of its prospects and its developments? Shades of Fawkes and Markland, good old

sporting parsons, of whom Mr Gilfil, with his old brown setter, was the legitimate descendant-, "Magnanimi heroes, nati melioribus annis, "

what would you say, could you wake up suddenly to the 1st of September or the 1st of October, new style, and witness the deadly preparations that are made for the slaughter of game? If you proposed to go pheasant-shooting in the "misty bright" month, when the woods and copses are in all their glory, as gorgeous even as the longtails themselves in their full plumage, you would be laughed at. If you talked of "charging" or "priming" you would be unintelligible. But, in spite of the fact that your bag at the end of the day could only show one brace for every ten brought home by Mr Lancaster and his friends,-in spite of bad flints, foul touch-holes, damp powder, and all the various contributories to a miss-fire, from which you so frequently suffered,-you had in many respects the advantage over ourselves, with all our apparatus of breech-loaders, hammerless locks, and double, yea even fourbarrelled, guns. You enjoyed your sport quite as much, and you pursued it under pleasanter conditions. In those days when "qualified" persons only were allowed to shoot, there were so few guns afield that there was enough game for everybody; and in the pre-scientific age of agriculture, the damage done to crops was never thought of. yeoman shot upon his own ground, and the tenant-farmer accepted without a murmur the doctrine that the game on the land belong ed to the owner of it, and that only owners, therefore, could lawfully shoot it. There was no bitterness or heartburning connected.

The

with partridge-shooting then; and it is quite clear, from the eclogue written by the worthy vicar of Orpington, that in those happy days you might even walk through a man's standing beans without its ever occurring to him to turn Dissenter in consequence. Now, however, though game is more abundant, guns much improved, miss-fires unknown, and the fatigue of shooting much lessened, we are too often reminded by it of the stalled ox, and look back with regret to the more humble sport of our forefathers, when no good or kindly feeling was destroyed by it. The more we study books like Mr Lancaster's, the more we feel driven to ask ourselves what will be the use of all this elaborate advice a generation hence? What is to be the future of game in this country? If the game laws are abolished, and shooting given up to the tenants, pheasants and partridges will soon follow in the wake of hares, and no sport at all will be left for any man who is rich enough to buy Mr Lancaster's guns. Grouse and deer are threatened in the north as much as other kinds of game in the south, and the time may come when all English gentlemen, if any still survive in this country, have to seek their sport abroad, and no more on their paternal acres. It is a painful reflection. But it is impossible to read such a book as Mr Lancaster's without being pricked by it. But changes of this kind are not accomplished in a day; and those who are contented with thinking that the present system will last their time, may interest themselves in Mr Lancaster's diagrams, without spoiling their appetites for dinner, or having any bad dreams after it.

will

T. E. KEBBEL.

WHEN King Henry VIII. pushed back the Welsh border westward, making Monmouthshire an English county, he included in it not only the old Gwentland between the Wye and the Usk, but also that portion of the old Morganwg or Morganland which lay between the Usk and the Rhymney. It was distinctly a part of Wales, but it was thenceforth to be a part of England. The process which was implied in this arbitrary act of the king is one which still continues by the natural force of events, and the new Glamorganshire which Henry VIII. formed between the Rhymney and the Loughor is a Welsh county, in which the majority of the population is English. So impossible is it at the present time to mark out a line of distinction between the two nationalities.

The foremost position of importance in this borderland of Wales and England is occupied by the great settlement of nearly a hundred thousand human beings, in which Llandaff and Cardiff form the leading elements. Llandaff is a village taking rank as one of the smallest of cities, and Cardiff is a borough taking rank as one of the largest of towns; and from these a network of new townships is constantly being spread, and the adjacent hamlets are gradually being absorbed, to form the component parts of one vast city for future days. Cardiff was the Castra Didii of the Romans, the camp of Aulus Didius, who held it as a station on the Via Julia next beyond Caerleon-upon-Usk; and in the provincial language it was known as Caerdydd; whence it became Cardiff, just as Mynydd at the end of the route became Meneff

or Menevia. and the mouth of the Mersey in the north-west, and as Glasgow and the mouth of the Clyde in the farther north, and as London and the mouth of the Thames in the south-east, so are Cardiff and the mouth of the Severn in this southwestern district of our island-a vast organ through which our Britain absorbs the food and breathes the air of its commercial life.

And as Liverpool

Here the portion of the Roman Way which crosses the town has developed into a broad modern street, skirted on either side with cottages of the humbler inhabitants and villas of the wealthier, gradually changing into a dense line of shops and offices as it reaches the centre. The town lies to the south of the street, and on the north is the castle, having in old days a religious house of no great mark on either side of it-that of the White Friars on the east, and that of the Black Friars on the west. These have passed away; but the parish church of St John, which with them, was contemporary stands on the opposite side of the way, near the site of the east gate, in a wide open space lately cleared of the encumbrance of old buildings. which once hemmed it in. The church is a fine specimen of medieval architecture, rendered still finer by the additions and insertions of recent times; the lofty arcades of its nave preserving their ancient dignity; the chancel surmounted by a modern clerestory, and its roof resting on corbel-heads which portray the faces of St Dyfrig, the first, and Dr Richard Lewis, the latest, of the bishops of Llandaff, and including Bishop Hooper, the Marian martyr of

Gloucester, with Keble and Pusey; while externally a beautiful tower, with enriched and embattled parapet and a crown of lofty pinnacles, rises high above the buildings of the town, proclaiming the pious munificence of some merchantprince of the fifteenth century, when already the port of Cardiff was acquiring wealth and fame.

And on the northern side of the great road, opposite to the church which brings down to us the ecclesiastical life of the middle ages, is the superb monument in which something of the feudal life of those days still survives. The shops and houses of the street are built against the turreted angle of the castle walls, where once the moat defended them; and a little farther is the chief entrance-gate, flanked with a Norman tower; and then the restored curtain-wall of the remaining portion of the castlefront, the encumbering buildings being cleared away, and the site of the moat spread over with turf and garden-beds; and at the farther angle, overtopping the adjacent antiquities, rises the lofty clock-tower, rich with the glories of modern medievalism, the twelve signs of the zodiac, with Mars and Jupiter and the rest of their presiding deities standing in arched niches on its several sides, and all depicted in gold and glowing colours. Still more gorgeous are the splendours of painting and sculpture and costly marble, and pictured glass and inlaid woodwork, and elaborate metal-work that appear within; for the chief rooms of the castle itself, the library and banqueting-hall, the private sitting-rooms and the oratory, the entrance-hall and the grand staircase, are all adorned with the same magnificence as the rooms of the clock-tower, and made resplendent with portraitures of

myth and legend, history and allegory.

The castle proper stands along the western side of the rectangular enclosure. Its front shows a fine specimen of the domestic architecture of the middle ages, with the chief features of its original workmanship carefully preserved and the decayed portions skilfully reproduced in accordance with the old. If the roofs and parapets and angle-towers wear the look of modern work, they are still a fitting framework around the three projecting semi-turrets with their traceried openings grey with age which form bay-windows to the banqueting-hall and library; the whole being surmounted by a lofty tower and spirelet which rises in the centre.

Beyond these domestic buildings and at the north-west angle of the courtyard, rises the keep. It is a lofty tower of ten sides, with a projecting turret on its southern front, built upon an artificial mound and encircled by an inner moat. The keep remains at present in its half-ruined condition; but the steep flight of steps leading downward from its entrance has been renovated, and a wooden bridge crosses its moat in place of the ancient drawbridge. From this there was a line of walls and buildings with a second gateway, passing obliquely across to the Norman tower at the outer entrance, and thus dividing the enclosure into two wards or bailies. western or inner ward was thus shut in on all sides by the buildings of the castle; while the outer and much larger ward beyond the division is surrounded on its other three sides by an embankment thrown up against the outer walls which defend the entire fortress.

The

The old tower standing beside the great entrance-gateway is