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sionately fond of poultry, that they pursue? After the first Tallyho, Reynard is rarely seen, till he is run in upon-once perhaps in the whole run, skirting a wood, or crossing a common. It is an Idea that is pursued, on a whirlwind of horses to a storm of canine music,-worthy, both, of the largest lion that ever leaped among a band of Moors, sleeping at midnight by an extinguished fire on the African sands. There is, we verily believe it, nothing Foxy in the Fancy of one man in all that glorious field of Three Hundred. Once off and away-while wood and welkin rings-and nothing is felt nothing is imaged in that hurricane flight, but scorn of all obstructions, dikes, ditches, drains, brooks, palings, canals, rivers, and all the impediments reared in the way of so many rejoicing madmen, by nature, art, and science, in an inclosed, cultivated, civilized, and Christian country. There they go-prince and peer, baronet and squire, the nobility and gentry of England, the flower of the men of the earth, each on such steed as Pollux never reined, nor Philip's warlike son -for could we imagine Bucephalus here, ridden by his own tamer, Alexander would be thrown out during the very first burst, and glad to find his way dismounted to a village alehouse for a pail of meal and water. Hedges, trees, groves, gardens, orchards, woods, farm-houses, huts, halls, mansions, palaces, spires, steeples, towers, and temples, all go wavering by, each demigod seeing, or seeing them not, as his winged steed skims or labours along, to the swelling or sinking music, now loud as a near regimental band, now faint as an echo. Far and wide over the country are dispersed the scarlet runners-and a hundred villages pour forth their admiring swarms, as the main current of the chase roars by, or disparted runlets float wearied and all astray, lost at last in the perplexing woods. Crash goes the toptimber of the five-barred gate-away over the ears flies the ex-rough-rider in a surprising somerset-after a succession of stumbles, down is the gallant Grey on knees and nose, making sad work among the fallow-Friendship is a fine thing, and the story of

Damon and Pythias most affecting indeed-but Pylades eyes Orestes on his back sorely drowned in sludge, and tenderly leaping over him as he lies, claps his hand to his ear, and with a 66 hark forward, tan-tivy !" leaves him to remount, lame and at leisure-and ere the fallen has risen and shook himself, is round the corner of the white villagechurch, down the dell, over the brook, and close on the heels of the straining pack, all a-yell up the hill crowned by the Squire's Folly. "Every man for himself, and God for us all," is the devout and ruling apothegm of the day. If death befall, what wonder? since man and horse are mortal; but death loves better a wide soft bed with quiet curtains and darkened windows in a still room, the clergyman in the one corner with his prayers, and the physician in another with his pills, making assurance doubly sure, and preventing all possibility of the dying Christian's escape. Let oak branches smite the too slowly stooping skull, or rider's back not timely levelled with his steed's; let faithless bank give way, and bury in the brook; let hidden drain yield to fore feet and work a sudden wreck; let old coal-pit, with briery mouth, betray; and roaring river bear down man and horse, to banks unscaleable by the very Welsh goat; let duke's or earl's son go sheer over a quarry fifty feet deep, and as many high; yet, "without stop or stay, down the rocky way," the hunter train flows on; for the music grows fiercer and more savage,-lo! all that remains together of the pack, in far more dreadful madness than hydrophobia, leaping out of their skins, under insanity from the scent, now strong as stink, for Vulpes can hardly now make a crawl of it; and ere he, they, whipper-in, or any one of the other three demoniacs, have time to look in one another's splashed faces, he is torn into a thousand pieces, gobbled up in the general growl; and smug, and smooth, and dry, and warm, and cozey, as he was an hour and twentyfive minutes ago exactly, in his furze bush in the cover, he is now piecemeal in about thirty distinct stomachs; and is he not, pray, well off for sepulture?

CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING. JACKET.

FYTTE SECOND.

We are always unwilling to speak of ourselves, lest we should appear egotistical-for egotism we detest. Yet the sporting world must naturally be anxious to know something of our early history-and their anxiety shall therefore be now assuaged. The truth is, that we enjoyed some rare advantages and opportunities in our boyhood regarding field sports, and grew up, even from that first great era in every Lowlander's life, Breeching-day, not only a fisher but a fowler; and it is necessary that we enter into some interesting details.

There had been from time immemorial, it was understood, in the Manse, a duck-gun of very great length, and a musket that, according to an old tradition, had been out both in the Seventeen and Forty-five. There were ten boys of us, and we succeeded by rotation to gun or musket, each boy retaining possession for a single day only; but then the shooting season continued all the year. They must have been of admirable materials and workmanship; for neither of them so much as once burst during the Seven Years' War. The musket, who, we have often since thought, must surely rather have been a blunderbuss in disguise, was a perfect devil for kicking when she received her discharge; so much so indeed, that it was reckoned creditable for the smaller boys not to be knocked down by the recoil. She had a very wide mouth-and was thought by us "an awfu' scatterer;" a qualification which we considered of the very highest merit. She carried any thing we chose to put into her-there still being of all her performances a loud and favourable report-balls, buttons, chucky stanes, slugs, or hail. She had but two faults-she had got addicted, probably in early life, to one habit of burning priming, and to another of hanging fire; habits of which it was impossible, for us at least, to break her by the most assiduous hammering of many a new series of flints; but such was the high place she justly occupied in the affection and admiration of us all, that faults like these did not in the least detract from her general cha

racter. Our delight when she did absolutely and positively and bonâ fide go off, was in proportion to the comparative rarity of that occurrence; and as to hanging fire-why we used to let her take her own time, contriving to keep her at the level as long as our strength sufficed, eyes shut perhaps, teeth clenched, face girning, and head slightly averted over the right shoulder, till Muckle-mou'd Meg, who, like most other Scottish females, took things leisurely, went off at last with an explosion like the blowing up of a rock.

The "Lang Gun," again, was of a much gentler disposition, and, instead of kicking, ran into the opposite extreme on being let off, inclining forwards as if she would follow the shot. We believe, however, this apparent peculiarity arose from her extreme length, which rendered it difficult for us to hold her horizontallyand hence the muzzle being attracted earthward, the entire gun appeared to leave the shoulder of the Shooter.That such is the true theory of the phenomenon seems to be proved by this-that when the "Lang Gun" was, in the act of firing, laid across the shoulders of two boys standing about a yard the one before the other, she kicked every bit as well as the blunderbuss. Her lock was of a very peculiar construction. It was so contrived that, when on full cock, the dog-head, as we used to call it, stood back at least seven inches, and unless the flint was put in to a nicety, by pulling the trigger you by no means caused any uncovering of the pan, but things in general remained in statu quo-and there was perfect silence. She had a worm-eaten stock, into which the barrel seldom was able to get itself fairly inserted; and even with the aid of circumvoluting twine, 'twas always coggly. Thus too, the vizy (Anglice sight) generally inclined unduly to one side or the other, and was the cause of all of us every day hitting and hurting objects of whose existence even we were not aware, till alarmed by the lowing or the galloping of cattle on the hills; and we hear now the yell

of an old woman in black bonnet and red cloak, who shook her staff at us like a witch, with the blood running down the furrows of her face, and, with many oaths, maintained that she was murdered. The "Lang Gun" had certainly a strong vomit and, with slugs or swan shot, was dangerous at two hundred yards to any living thing. Bob Laurie, at that distance, arrested the career of a mad dog-a single slug having been sent through the eye into the brain. We wonder if one or both of those companions of our boyhood be yet alive or, like many other great guns that have since made more noise in the world, fallen a silent prey to the rust of oblivion !

Not a boy in the school had a game certificate-or, as it was called in the parish" a leeshance." Nor, for a year or two, was such a permit necessary; as we confined ourselves almost exclusively to sparrows. Not that we had any personal animosity to the sparrow individually-on the contrary, we loved him, and had a tame onea fellow of infinite fancy-with comb and wattles of crimson cloth like a game-cock. But their numbers, without number numberless, seemed to justify the humanest of boys in killing any quantity of sprauchs. Why, they would sometimes settle on the clipped half-thorn and half-beech hedge of the Manse garden in myriads, midge-like; and then out any two of us, whose day it happened to be, used to sally with Muckle-mou'd Meg and the Lang Gun, charged two hands and a finger; and, with a loud shout, startling them from their roost like the sudden casting of a swarm of bees, we let drive into the whirr-a shower of feathers was instantly seen swimming in the air, and flower-bed and onion-bed covered with scores of the mortally wounded old cocks with black heads, old hens with brown, and the pride of the eaves laid low before their first crop of pease! Never was there such a parish for sparrows. You had but to fling a stone into any stack-yard, and up rose a sprauch-shower. The thatch of every cottage was drilled by them like honey-combs. House-spouts were of no use in rainy weather-for they were all choked up by sprauchnests. At each particular barn-door, when the farmers were at work, you might have thought you saw the entire VOL. XXIV.

sparrow-population of the parish. Seldom a Sabbath, during pairing, building, breeding, nursing, and training season, could you hear a single syllable of the sermon for their sakes, all ahuddle and a-chirp in the belfry and among the old loose slates. On every stercoraceous deposit on coach, cart, or bridle road, they were busy on grain or pulse; and, in spite of cur and cat, legions embrowned every cottage garden. Emigration itself in many million families would have left no perceptible void; and the inexterminable multitude would have laughed at the Plague.

The other small birds of the parish began to feel their security from our shot, and sung their best, unscared on hedge, bush, and tree. Perhaps, too, for sake of their own sweet strains, we spared the lyrists of Scotland, the linnet and the lark, the one in the yellow broom, the other beneath the rosy cloud-while there was ever a sevenfold red shield before Robin's breast, whether flitting silent as a falling leaf, or trilling his autumnal lay on the rigging or pointed gable-end of barn or byre. Now and then the large bunting, conspicuous on a top-twig, and proud of his rustic psalmody, tempted his own doom-or the cunning stone-chat, glancing about the old dikes, usually shot at in vain-or yellow hammer, under the ban of the national superstition, with a drop of the devil's blood beneath his pretty crest, pretty in spite of that cruel creed, or green-finch, too rich in plumage for his poorer song,—or shilfa, the beautiful nest-builder, shivering his white-plumed wings in shade and sunshine, in joy the most rapturous, in grief the most despairing of all the creatures of the air, or redpole balanced on the down of the thistle, or flower of the bunwced on the old clovery lea,-or haply twice seen in a season, the very goldfinch himself, a radiant and gorgeous spirit brought on the breeze from afar, and worthy, if only slightly wounded, of being enclosed within a silver cage from Fairy Land.

But we waxed more ambitious as we grew old-and then woe to the rookery on the elm-tree-grove! Down dropt the dark denizens in dozens, rebounding with a thud and a skraigh from the velvet moss, which under that umbrage formed firm floor for Tita20

nia's feet-while others kept dangling dead or dying by the claws, cheating the crusted pie, and all the blue skies above were intercepted by cawing clouds of distracted parents, now dipping down in despair almost within shot, and now, as if sick of this world, soaring away up into the very heavens, and disappearing to return no more-till sunset should bring silence, and the night-air roll off the horrid smell of sulphur from the desolated bowers; and then indeed would they come all flying back upon their strong instinct, like black-sailed barks before the wind, some from the depth of faroff fir-woods, where they had lain quaking at the ceaseless cannonade, some from the furrows of the new brairded fields aloof on the uplands, some from deep dell close at hand, and some from the middle of the moorish wilderness.

Happiest of all human homes, beautiful Craig-Hall! For so even now dost thou appear to be-in the rich, deep, mellow, green light of imagination trembling on tower and tree art thou yet undilapidated and undecayed, in thy old manorial solemnity almost majestical, though even then thou hadst long been tenanted but by a humble farmer's family-people of low degree? The evening-festival of the First Day of the Rooks-nay, scoff not at such an anniversary-was still held in thy ample kitchen-of old the bower of brave lords and ladies bright —while the harper, as he sung his song of love or war, kept his eyes fixed on her who sat beneath the deas. The days of chivalry were gone-and the days had come of curds and cream, and preferred by some people, though not by us, of cream-cheese. Old men and old women, widowers and widows, yet all alike cheerful and chatty at a great age, for often as they near the dead, how more life-like seem the living! Middle-aged men and middle-aged women, husbands and wives, those sedate with hair combed straight on their foreheads, sun-burnt faces, and horny hands established on their knees these serene with counte nances many of them not unlovelycomely all-and with arms decently folded beneath their matronly bosoms -as they sat in their holiday dresses, feeling as if the season of youth had hardly yet flown by, or were, on such a merry meeting, for a blink restored!

Boys and virgins-those bold even in their bashfulness, these blushing whenever eyes met eyes-nor would they could they-have spoken in the hush to save their souls-yet ere the evening star arose, many a pretty maiden had, down-looking and playing with the hem of her garment, sung linnetlike her ain favourite auld Scottish sang! and many a sweet sang even then delighted Scotia's spirit, though Robin Burns was but a boy-walking mute among the wild flowers on the moor-nor aware of the immortal melodies soon to breathe from his impassioned heart!

Of all the year's holidays, not even excepting the First of May, this was the most delightful. The First of May, longed for so passionately, from the first peep of the primrose, sometimes came deformed with mist and cloud, or cheerless with whistling winds, or winter-like with a sudden fall of snow. And thus all our hopes were dashedthe roomy hay-waggon remained in its shed-the preparations made for us in the distant moorland farm-house were vain-the fishing-rods hung useless on the nails-and disconsolate schoolboys sat moping in corners, sorry, ashamed, and angry with Scotland's springs. But though the "leafy month of June" be frequently showery, it is almost always sunny too. Every half hour there is such a radiant blink that the young heart sings aloud for joy; summer rain makes the hair grow, and hats are of little or no use towards the Longest Day; there is something cheerful even in thunder, if it be not rather too near; the lark has not yet ceased altogether to sing, for he soars over his second nest, unappalled beneath the sablest cloud; the green earth repels from her refulgent bosom the blackest shadows, nor will suffer herself to be saddened in the fulness and brightness of her bliss; through the heaviest flood the blue skies will still be making their appearance with an impatient smile, and all the rivers and burns with the multitude of their various voices, sing praises unto heaven.

Therefore, bathing our feet in joy, we went bounding over the flowery fields and broomy braes to the grovegirdled Craig-Hall. During the long noisy day, we thought not of the coming evening, happy as we knew it was to be; and during the long and

almost as noisy evening, we forgot all the pastime of the day. Weeks before, had each of us engaged his part ner for the first country-dance, by right his own, when supper came, and to sit close to him with her tender side, with waist at first stealthily arm-encircled, and at last boldly and almost with proud display. In the church yard, before or after Sabbath-service, a word whispered into the ear of blooming and blushing rustic sufficed; or if that opportunity failed, the angler had but to step into her father's burn-side cottage, and with the contents of his basket, leave a tender request, and from behind the gable-end, carry away a word, a smile, a kiss, and a waving farewell.

Many a high-roofed hall have we, since those days, seen made beautiful with festoons and garlands, beneath the hand of taste and genius decorating, for some splendid festival, the abode of the noble expecting a still nobler guest. But oh! what pure bliss, and what profound, was then breathed into the bosom of boyhood from that glorious branch of hawthorn, in the chimney-itself almost a tree, so thick -so deep-so rich its load of blossoms, so like its fragrance to something breathed from heaven-and so transitory in its sweetness too, that as she approached to inhale it, down fell many a snow-flake to the virgin's breath-in an hour all melted quite away! No broom that now-a-days grows on the brae, so yellow as the broom-the golden broom-the broom that seemed still to keep the hills in sunlight long after the sun himself had sunk the broom in which we first found the lintwhite's nest-and of its petals, more precious than pearls, saw framed a wreath for the dark hair of that dark-eyed girl, an orphan, and melancholy even in her merriment dark-haired and dark-eyed indeed, but whose forehead, whose bosom, were yet whiter than the driven snow. Greenhouses-conservatories-orangeries are exquisitely balmy still-and, in presence of these strange plants, one could believe that he had been transported to some rich foreign clime. But then we carry the burden of our years along with us-and that consciousness bedims the beauty of the blossoms, and makes mournful the balmas from flowers in some fair burialplace, breathing of the tomb. But

oh! that Craig-Hall hawthorn! and oh! that Craig-Hall broom! they send their sweet rich scent so far into the hushed air of memory, that all the weary worn-out weaknesses of age drop from us like a garment, and even now

the flight of that swallow seems more aerial-more alive with bliss his clay-built nest-the ancient long-ago. blue of the sky returns to heavennot for many a many a long year have we seen so fair-so frail-so transparent and angel-mantle-looking a cloud! The very viol speaks-the very dance responds in Craig-Hall-this-this is the very Festival of the First Day of the Rooks-Mary Mather, the pride of the parish-the county-the land -the earth-is our partner-and long mayest thou, O moon! remain behind thy cloud-when the parting kiss is given-and the love-letter, at that tenderest moment,dropped into her bosom!

But we have lost the thread of our discourse, and must pause to search for it, even like a spinster of old, in the disarranged spindle of one of those pretty little wheels now heard no more in the humble ingle, hushed by machinery clink-clanking with powerlooms in every town and city of the land. Another year, and we often found ourselves-alone-or with one chosen comrade,-for even then we began to have our sympathies and antipathies, not only with roses and lilies, or to cats and cheese, but with or to the eyes, and looks, and foreheads, and hair, and voices, and motions, and silence, and rest of human beings, loving them with a perfect love-we must not say hating them with a perfect hatred,-alone or with a friend, among the mists and marshes of moors, in silent and stealthy search of the solitary curlew, that is, the Whawp! At first sight of his long bill aloft above the rushes, we could hear our heart beating quick time in the desert; at the turning of his neck, the body being yet still, our heart ceased to beat altogether-and we grew sick with hope when near enough to see the wild beauty of his eye. Unfolded, like a thought, was then the brown silence of the shy creature's ample wings-and with a warning cry he wheeled away upon the wind, unharmed by our ineffectual hail, seen falling far short of the deceptive distance, while his mate that had lain couched-perhaps in her nest of eggs

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