thiiu^r$itg of ^Hlifo^t^i^^ No. c/2^. Division - !^Jjd. Range Shelf . Received PRESENTED TO 87/ ^^^^<^ THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, t BY I KOMOXD L. OOOLD. ? ^ ^-L ,■36' wm >.#m^* ^^1 THE R E C R E A T I N-S CHRISTOPHER NORTH. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. NEW YOEK: D. APPLETON & CO., 90, 92 & 94 GRAND STREET. 1869. / ■ CONTENTS. MM Ay CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET, '^^ Fytte Fiust 5 FvTTE Secoxt , 15 Fttte TiiiiiD ' 2i A TALE OF EXPIATION 33 MORNING MONOLOGUE 44 THE FIELD OF FLOWERS 50 COTTAGES 55 AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY 73 INCH CRUIN 91 A DAY AT WINDERMERE 95 -THE MOORS, Prologue 103 FiiGHT FiHST — Glex Etive 113 Flight Secoxd — The Coves of CniTAcnAx 122 Fligut Tuihd — Still Life 1 29 Flight Fourth — Dowx River axd up Loch 140 HIGHLAND SNOW-STORM 150 THE HOLY CHILD 157 OUR PARISH 161 MAY-DAY 168 SACRED POETRY, Chapter 1 62 Chapter II 183 Chapter III 195 Chapter IV 200 CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY, First Canticle 203 Second Canticle 213 Third Cakticle 222 Fourth Canticle 228 DR. ICTCHINER, First Course 234 Second Course 238 Third Course 241 Fourth Course 245 SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS, First Rhapsody .* 249 Second Rhapsody 255 A FEW WORDS ON THOMSON 200 THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMuCNT 267 CHRISTMAS DREAMS 271 OUR WINTER QUARTERS 278 iV^TROLL TO GRA.SSMERE, First Saunter 287 Second Saunter - . ...c ' 297 L'ENVOY 303 3 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH, CimiSTOPl-IER IN HIS SPOUTING JACKET. FYTTE FIRST. There is a fine and beautiful alliance between all pastimes pursued on flood, field, and fell. The principles inhuman nature on which they depend, are in all the same ; but those princi- ples are subject to infinite modifications and varieties, accordiBg to the difference of indi- vidual and national character. All such pas- times, whether followed merely as pastimes, or as professions, or as the immediate means of sustaining life, require sense, sagacity, and knowledge of nature and nature's laws ; nor less, patience, perseverance, courage even, a.nd bodily strength or activity, while the spirit which animates and supports them is a spirit of anxiety, dovibt, fear, hope, joy, exultation, and triumph — in the heart of the young a fierce passion — in the heart of the old a passion still, but subdued and tamed down, without, however, being much dulled or dead- ened, by various experience of all the myste- ries of the calling, and by the gradual subsid- ing of all impetuous impulses in the frames of all mortal men beyond perhaps threescore, when the blackest head will be becoming gray, the most nervous knee less firm.ly knit, the most steely-springed instep less elastic, the keenest eye less of a far-keeker, and, above all, the most boiling heart less like a caldron or a crater — yea, the whole man subject to some dimness or decay, and, consequently, the whole duty of man like the new edition of a book, from which many passages that formed the chief glory of the cditio princcps have been expunged — the whole character of the style corrected without being thereby improved — just like the later editions of the Pleasures of Ima- gination, which were written by Akenside when he was abc ut twenty-one, and altered by him at forty — to the exclusion or destruction of many most spkndkJa vilia, by which process the poem, in our humble opinion, Avas shorn of its brightest beams, and suffered disastrous twilight and eclipse — perplexing critics. Now, seeing that such pastimes are in num- ijer almost infinite, and infinite the varieties of human character, pray what is there at all sur prising in your being madly fond of shooting — and your brother Tom just as foolish about fishing— and cousin Jack perfectly insane on fox-hunting — while the old gentleman your fa- ther, in spite of wind and weather, perennial gout, and annual apoplexy, goes a-coursing of the white-hipped hare on the bleak Yorkshire ^olds — and uncle Ben, as if just escaped from Bedlam or St. Luke's, with Dr. Haslam at his heels, or with a few hundred yards' start of Dr. Warburton, is seen galloping, in a Welsh wig and strange apparel, in the rear of a pack ofLilliputian^beagles, all barking as if they were as mad as their master, supposed to be in chase of an invisible animal that keeps eternally doubling in field and forest — "still hoped for, never seen," and well christened by the name of Escape ■? Phrenology sets the question for ever at rest. All people have thirty-three faculties. Now there are but twenty-four letters in the alpha- bet ; yet how many languages— some six-thou- sand we believe, each of which is susceptible of many dialects ! No wonder, then, that 3^ou might as well try to count all the sands on the sea-shore as alfthe species of sportsmen. There is, therefore, nothing to prevent any man with a large and sound development from excelling, at once, in rat-catching and deer-stalking— from being, in short, a uruver- sal genius in sports and pastimes. Heaven has made us such a man. Yet there seems to be a natural course oi progress in pastimes. We do not now speak of marbles— or knuckling down at taw— or trundling a hoop— or pall-lall— or pitch and toss or any other of the games of the school playground. We restrict ourselves to what, somewhat inaccurately -perhaps, are called field-sports. Thus angling seems the earliest of them all in the order of nature. There the new-breeched urchin stands on the low bridge of the little bit burnie ! and with Ciooked pin, baited with one unwrithing ringof adead worm, and attached to a yarn-thread— for he has not j^et got into hair, and is years off gut— his lod of the mere willow or hazel wand, there will RECEEATIOXS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. ne s'and during all his play-hours, as forget- ful of his primer as if the ■n-eary art of print- ing had never been invented, day after day, ■week after week, month after month, in mute, deep, earnest, passionate, heart-mind-and-soiil- engrossing hope of some time or other catcn- ing a minnow or a beardie ! A tug — a tug ! With face ten times flushed and pale by turns ere you could count ten, he at last has strength, in the agitation of his fear and joy, to pull awa)' at the monster — and there he lies in his beaut)' among the gowans and the greensward, for he has whapped him right over his head and far awa)', a fish a quarter of an ounce in weight, and, at the verj' least, two inches long ! Off he flies, on wings of wind, to his father, mother, and sisters and brothers, and cousins, and all the neighbourhood, holding the fish aloft in both hands, still fearful of its escape, and, like a genuine child of corruption, his eyes brighten at the first blush of cold blood on his small fumy fingers. He carries about with him, up- stairs and down-stairs, his prey upon a plate ; he will not wash his hands before dinner, for he exults in the silver scales adhering to the thumb-nail that scooped the pin out of the baggy's maw — and at night, " cabin'd, cribb'd, confined," he is overheard murmuring in his sleep — a thief, a robber, and a murderer, in his yet infant dreams ! From that hour Angling is no more a mere delightful day-dream, haunted by the dim hopes of imaginary minnows, but a reality — an art — a science — of which the flaxen-headed school- boy feels himself to be master — a mystery in which he has been initiated; and off he goes now all alone, in the power of successful pas- sion to the distant brook — brook a mile off — with fields, and hedges, and single trees, and little groves, and a huge forest of six acres, be- tween it and the house in which he is boarded or was born ! There flows on the slender music of the shadowy shallows — there pours the deeper din of the birch-tree'd waterfall. The scared water-pyet flits away from stone to stone, and dipping, disappears among the airy bubbles, to him a new sight of joy and wonder. And oh ! how sweet the scent of the broom or furze, yel- lowing along the braes, where leap the lambs, less happy than he, on the knolls of sunshine ! His grandfather has given him a half-crown rod in two pieces — yes, his line is of hair twisted — plaited by his own soon-instructed little fingers. By Heavens, he is fishing with the fly ! And the Fates, who, grim and grisly as they are painted to be by fuU-gro^Ti, imgrateful, lying poets, smile like angels upon thepaidler in the brook) winnowing the air Avith their wings into western breezes, while at the very first throw the yellow trout forsakes his fastness beneath the bog-wood, and with a lazy wallop, and then a sudden plunge, and then a race like lightning, changes at once the child into the b'^'y, and shoots through his thrilling and aching heart the ecstasy of a new life expanding in that glorious pastime, even as a rainbow on a sudden brightens up the sky. Fortuna favct fortibtts — and with one long pull, and strong pull, and pull altogether, Johnny lands a twelve- incher on the soft, smooth, silvery sand of the •inly bay in all the burn where such an exploit ' was possible, and dashing upon him like au osprey, soars up with him in his talons to the bank, breaking his line as he hurries off to a spot of safet}' twentv' yards from the pool, and then flinging him down on a heath-surrounded plat of sheep-nibbled verdure, lets him bounce about till he is tired, and lies gasping with un- frequent and feeble motions, bright and beauti- ful, and glorious with all his yellow light and crimson lustre, spotted, speckled, and starred in his scaly splendour, beneath a sun that never shone before so dazzingly : but now the ra diance of the captive creature is dimmer and obscured, for the eye of day winks and seems almost shut behind that slow-sailing mass of clouds, composed in equal parts of air, rain, and sunshine. Springs, summers, autumns, winters — each within itself longer, hy many times longer than the whole year of grown-up life, that slips at last through one's fingers like a knotless thread — pass over the curled darling's brow ; and look at him now, a straight and strengthy strip- ling, in the savage spirit of sport, springing over rock-ledge after rock-ledge, nor heeding aught as he plashes knee-deep, or waistband- high, through river-feeding torrents, to the glo- rious music of his running and ringing reel, after a tongue-hooked salmon, insanely seeking with the ebb of tide, but all in vain, the wliite-^ breakers of the sea. No hazel or willow wand, no half-crown rod of ash framed by village Wright, is now in his practised hands, of which the very left is dexterous ; but a twent^-'feet rod of Phin's, all ring-rustling, and a-glitter with the preserving varnish, limber as the at- teniiating line itself, and lithe to its topmost tenuity as the elephant's proboscis — the hiccory and the horn without twist, knot, or flaw — from butt to fly a faultless taper, "fine by degrees and beautifully less," the beau-ideal of a rod by the skill of cunning craftsman to the senses materialized! A fish — fat, fair, and forty ! "She, is a salmon, therefore to be woo'd — she is a salmon, therefore to be won"' — but shy, timid, capricious, headstrong, now wrathful and now full of fear, like any other female whom the cruel artist has hooked by lip or heart, and, in spite of all her struggling, will bring to the gasp at last ; and then with calm eyes behold her lying in the shade dead or worse than dead, fast-fading, and to be re-illumined no more the lustre of her beauty, insensible to sun or shower, even the most perishable of all perish- able things in a world of perishing ! — But the salmon has grown sulky, and must be made' to spring to thepkmging-stone. There, suddenly, instinct with new passion, she shoots out of the foam like a bar of silver bullion ; and, re- lasping into the flood, is in another moment at the very head of the waterfall! Give her the butt — 2-ive her the butt — or she is gone for ever with the thunder into ten fathom deep! — Xow comes the trial of your tackle — and when was Phin ever known to fail at the edge of cliff or cataract 1 Her snoirt is southwards — right up the middle of the main current of the hill-born river, as if she would seek its very course where she was spawned ! She still swims swift, and strong, and deep — and the line goes steanv, boys, steady — stifi'and steady as a Tory CHRISTOPHER O HIS SPORTIXG JACKET. in the roar of Opposition. There is 3-et an hour's play in her dorsal fin — danger in the flap of her tail — amd yet may her silver shoulder shatter the gut against a rock. Wh}- the river was yesterday in spate, and she is fresh run from the sea. All the lesser ■R-aterfalls are now level with the flood, and she meets with no impediment or obstruction —the course is clear — no tree-roots here — no floating branches — for during the night they have all been swept down to the salt loch. In medio tutissi/nas ibis — ay, now }'ou feel she begins to fail — the butt tells now ever)' time you deliver your right. What ! another mad leap ! yet another sullen plunge ! She seems absolutely to have discovered, or rather to be an impersonation of, the Perpetual Motion. Stand back out of the way, )'ou son of a sea- cook ! — you in the tattered blue breeches, with the tail of your shirt hanging out. Who the devil sent you all here, ye vagabonds 1 — Ha ! Watty Ritchie, my man, is that youl God bless your honest laughing phiz ! What Watty, would you think of a Fish like that about Peebles ? Tarn Grieve never gruppit sae hea^y a ane since first he belanged to the Council. — Curse that colley ! Ay ! well done, Watty ! Stone him to Stobbo. Confound these stirks — "J" that white one, with caving horns, kicking iieels, and straight-up tail, come bellowing by between us and the river, then, " Madam ! all is lost, except honour!" If we lose this Fish at six o'clock, then suicide at seven. Our will is made — ten thousand to the Foundling — ditto to the Thames Tunnel ha — ha — my Beauty! Methinks we could fain and fond kiss thy silver side, languidly lying ailoat on the foam .as if ajl further resistance now were vain, and grace- fuilv thou wert surrendering thyself to death ! No faith in female — she trusts to the last trial of her tail — sweetly workest thou, O Reel of Jteeh ! and on thy smooth axle spinning sleep'st, even, as Milton describes her, like our own worthy planet. Scrope — Bainbridge — Maule — princes among Anglers — oh ! that you were here ! Where the devil is Sir Humphry ] At his retort 1 By mysterious sympathy — far off at his own Trows, the Kerss feels that we are killing the noblest fish whose back ever rippled the surface of deep or shallow in the Tweed. Tom Purdy stands like a seer, en- tranced in glorious vision, beside turreted Ab- botsford. Shade of Sandy Govan ! Alas ! alas ! I'oor Sandy — why on thvpale face that melan- choly smile !— Peter! The Gaff! The Gaff! Into the eddy she sails, sick and slow, and al- most with a swirl — whitening as she nears the sand — there she has it — struck right into the shoulder, fairer than that of Juno, Diana, Mi- nerva, or Venus — and lies at last in all her glo- rious length and breadth of beaming beauty, fit prey for giant or demigod angling before he Flood ! "The child is father of the man. An! I would wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety :" i So much for the Angler. The Shooter, again, he begins w=th his pipe-gun, formed of -he last V ear's growth of a branch of the plane- fee — the beautiful dark-green-leaved and fra- grant-flowered plane-tree — that s^arrds straight in stem and round in head, visible and audible too from afar the bee-resounding umbrage, alike on stormy sea-coast and in sheltered in land vale, still loving the roof of the fisher man's or peasant's cottage. Then comes, perhaps, the city pop-gun, in shape like a verv' musket, such as soldiers bear — a Christmas present from parent, once a colonel of volunteers — nor feeble to discharge the pea-bullet or barley-shot, formidable to face and eyes ; nor yet unfelt, at six paces, by hin der-end of pla3Tnate, scornfully yet fearfully exposed. But the shooter soon tires of such ineffectual trigger — and his soul, as well ar his hair, is set on fire by that extraordinarj compound — Gunpowder. He begins with hurtl- ing off his eyebrows on the King's birthday squibs and crackers follow, and all the plea- sures of the pluff. But he soon longs to let off a gun — " and follow to the field some war- like lord" — in hopes of being allowed to dis- charge one of the double-barrels, after Ponto has made his last point, and the half-hidden chimneys of home are again seen smoking among the trees. This is his first practice in fire arms, and from that hour he is — a Shooter. Then there is in most rural parishes — and of rural parishes alone do we condescend to speak — a pistol, a horse one, with a bit of silver on the butt — perhaps one that originally served in the Scots Greys. It is bought, or borrowed, by the j-oung shooter, who begins firing first at barn-doors, then at trees, and then at living things — a strange cur, who, from his lolling tonguemaybesupposedto have the hydrophobia — a cat that has purred herself asleep on the sunny churchyard wall, or is vatching mice at their hole-mouths among the graves — a water- rat in the mill-lead — or weasel that, running to his retreat in the wall, always turns round to look at you — a goose wandered from his common in disappointed love-^or brown duck, easily jnistaken by the unscrupulous for a wild on-c, in pond remote from human dwelling, or on meadow by the river side, away from the clack of the muter-mill. The corby-crow, too, shout- ed out of his nest on some tree lower than usual, is a good flpng mark to the more ;ad- vanced class : or morning magpie, a-chatter at skreigh of day close to the cottage door among the chickens ; or a flock of pigeons wheeling overhead on the stubble field, or sil- ting so thick together, that every ftock is blue with tempting plumage. But the pistol is discharged foi a fowling piece — brown and rust}', with a slight crack probably in the muzzle, and a lock out of all proportion to the barrel. Then the young shooter aspires at halfpennies thrown iip into the air — and generally hit, for there is never wanting an apparent dent in copper metal ; and thence he mounts to the glancing and skimming swallow, a household bird, and there- fore to be held sacred, but shot at on the excuse of its being nest to impossible to hit him — an opinion strengthened into belief by several summers' practice. But the small brown and white marten wheeling through below the bridge, or along the many-holed red sand-bank, is admitted by all boys to be fair game — and still more, the longed-winged legless black RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. devilet,ihat, if it falls to the ground, cannot rise again, and therefore screams wheeling round the corner i and battlements of towers and cas- tles, or far out even of cannon shot, gambles in companies of hundreds, and regiments of a thousand, aloft in the evening ether, within the orbit of the eagle's flight. It seems to boj'- ish eyes, that the creatures near the earth, when' but little blue sky is seen between the specks and the wallflowers growing on the coign of vantage — the signal is given to fire ; but the devilets are too high in heaven to smell the sulphur. The starling whips with a shrill cry into his nest, and nothing falls to the ground bnt a tiny bit of mossy mortar inhabited by a spider! But the Day of Days arrives at last, when the school-boy, or rather the college boy, return- ing to his rural vacation, (for in Scotland college winters tread close, too close, on the heels of academies,) has a gim — a gun in a case — a double-barrel too — of his own — and is provided with a license, probably without any other qualification than that of hit or miss. On some portentous morning he elTulges with the sun in velveteen jacket and breeches of the same — many-buttoned gaiters, and an unker- chiefed throat. 'Tis the fourteenth of Septem- ber, and lo ! a pointer at his heels — Fonto, of course — a game-bag like a beggar's wallet at his side — ilestined to be at eve as full of charily — and all the paraphernalia of an accomplished sportsman. Proud, were she to see the siglv*, would be the "mother that bore him;" the heart of that old sportsman, his daddy, would sing for joy ! The chained raastifl!" in the yard 3'owls his admiration ; the servant lasses uplift the pane of their garret, and, with suddenly withdrawn blushes, titter their delight in their rich paper curls and pure night-clothes. Rab Ro£:er, who has been cleaning out the bam. comes forth to partake of the caulker; and away go the footsteps of the old poacher and his pupil through the autumnal rime, cfT to the uplands, where — for it is one of the ear- liest of harvests — there is scarcely a single acre of standing corn. The turnip fields are bright green with hope and expectation — and coveys are couching on lazy beds beneath the potato-shaw. Every high hedge, ditch- guarded on either side, shelters its own brood — imagination hears the whir shaking the dew- drops from the broom on the brae — and first one bird, and then another, and then the re- maining numoer, in itself no contemptible co- vej-, seems to fancy's ear to spring single, or in the clouds, from the coppice brushwood with here and there an intercepting standard tree. Poor Ponto is much to be pitied. Either having a cold in his nose, or having ante-break- fasted by stealth on a red herring, he can scent nothing short of a badorer, and, even,* other field, he starts in horror, shame, and amazement, to hear himself, without having attended to his points, enclosed in a whirring covey. He is still duly t:iken between those inexorable knees ; out comes the speck-and-span new dog-whip, heavy enough for a horse ; and the yowl of the patient is heard over the whole parish. Mothers press their yet unchaslised 'ifants to their breasts ; and the schoolmaster. fastening a knowing eye on dunce ani neVr- do-weel, holds up, in silent warning, the terror of the taws. Frequent flogging will c^we the spirit of the best man and dog in Britain Ponto travels now in fear and trembling but a few yards from his tyrant's feet, till, rousing himself to the sudden scent of something smell- ing strongly, he draws slowly and beautifully, and "There fix'd, a perfect senile irie standi. " Up runs the Tyro ready-cocked, ami, in his eagerness, stumbling among the stubMe.whcn, hark and lo ! the gabble of grey goslings, and the bill-protruded hiss of goose and gander! Bang goes the right-hand barrel at Ponto, who now thinks it high time to be oflT to the tune of "ower the hills and far awa'," while the young gentleman, half-ashamed and half-in- censed, half-glad and hall-sorry, discharges the left-hand barrel, with a highly improper curse, at the father of the feathered family before him, who receives the shot like a ball in his breast, throws a somerset quite surprising for a bird of his usual habits, and after biting the dust M'ith his bill, and thumping it with his bottom, breathes an eternal farewell to this suMunary scene — and leaves himself to be paid for at the rate of cighteenpence a pound to his justly irritated owner, on whose farm he had led a long and not only harmless, but honourable and useful life. It is nearly as impossible a thincr as wo kni>w, to borrow a dog about the time the ^un has reached his meridian, on the First D.iy of the Partridges. Ponto by this lime has sneaked, unseen by human eye, into his kennel, and coiled himself up into the arms of " tired Na- ture's sweet restorer, balmy sleep." A farmer makes offer of a colley, who, from numbering among his paternal ancestors a Spanish pointer, is quite a Don in his way among the cheepers, and has been known in a turnip field to stand in an attitude very similar to that of setting. Luath has no objection to a frolic over the fields, and plays the part of Ponto lo perfection. At last he catches sight of a covey basking, and, leaping in upon them open-mouthed, de- spatches them right and left, even like the fa- mous dog Billy killing rats in the pit at West- minster. The birds are bagged with a irenile remonstrance, and Lualh's exploit rewarded with a whang of cheese. Elated by the pres- sure o*n his shoulder, the j-oung gentleman laughs at the idea of pointing; .ind fires away, like winking, at ever)' uprise of birds, near or remote; works a miracle bybri.'^ging down three at a time, that chanced, unknown to him, to be crossing, and wearied with such slaughter, lends his gun to the attendant farmer, who can mark down to an inch, and walks up to the dropped pout as if he could kick her up with his foot ; and thus the bag in a few hours is half full of feathers; while, to close with eclat the sport of the day, the dunning elder takes him to a bramble bush, in a wall nook, at the edse of the wood, and returning the gun into his hands, shows him poor pussy sitting with open eyes, fast asleep ! The pellets are in her I brain, and turning herself over, she crunkles out to her full length, like a piece-of untwisting. ! Indian rubber, and is dead. The posterior CHRISTOPHER IX HIS SPORTIXG JACKET. podoh of ihe jacket, yet unstained by blood, yauus 10 i^-ceive her — and in she goes plump ; paw s, ears, body, feet, fud, and all — while Lualh, aU the way home to the Mains, keeps snoking at the red drops oozing through; for well he knows, in summer's heat and winter's cold, the smell of pussy, whether sitting beneath a tuft of withered grass on the brae, or burrowed beneath a snow wreath. A hare, we certainly must say, in spite of haughtier sportsman's scorn, is, when sitting, a most satisfactory shot- y But let us trace no further thus, step by step, 'the Pilgrim's Progress. Look at him n««w— a finished sportsman — on the moors — the bright black boundless Dalwhinnie moors, strctchmg away, by long Loch Erricht side, into the dim and distant day that hangs, with all its clouds, over the bosom of far Loch Rannoch. Is that the plulTer at partridge-pouts who had nearly been the death of poor Ponto ? Lord Kennedy • himself might take a lesson now from the straight and steady style in which on the moun- tain brow, and up to the mid wi ui and left, like lead on the heather — i '■ hen, singled out among the orphan calmly as a cook would do it in thi among a pile of plumage. No ra i within — no needless shot out of distance — covered evcrj' feather before stir of finger^ and body, back, ami brain, pierced, broken, shattered! And what perfect pointers ! There they stand, as still as death — life — the whole half dozen ! >' tanned — Don, the r' white — Primrose, i bright brown, and >. colours, often seen afar through the misls like a meteor. So mach for the .Vngler's and the Shooter's Progress — now brieily for tho Hunter's. Hunt- ing, in this countr}'. '.ibly commences with cats. Few c. aitacat. If you do not find heron iIk' Hi end of the house just at ' i observation, and by it lixiv i. i n- i 'a ■ ;.ii^ oi brae — somewhere about the premises — if un- successful, peep into the byre, and up ihrouuh a hole among the dusty divots of the roof, and chance is yon see her eyes glittering far-ben in the gloom; but if she be not there either, into the barn and up on the mow, and surely she is on the straw or on the baulks below the liipplcs. No. Well, then, let your eye travel along the edge of that little wood behind the cottage — ay, yonder she is ! — but she sees both you and your two terriers^-one rough and the other smooth — and, sliukin? away through a gap in the old hawthorn hedge in among the hazels, she cither lies ; to putT and blow, and snort, aiul p;U 1;;- i iws lo his paunch — the son is thrown out by a , , , .. , ,, • ...... .,.p j,p. :i and to her I she wili deafest Mtlt . to break in n; ;;ettin2 afl" I y : ' his ain study. Now, getiile r^ though we have : most cruel case . certainly did ['lay some f«i\' . V'-..; - from r' ■ to the r I'l^hi'-ii :o vow, that :" it on the ■ have ^'ji iiion, in ••", thai ........ ii we most ■ part, •e, far re we ;(.h wanton laibanty . We are not iii.hung a homily on iiumauiiy to animals, nor have we been appointed to succeed the Rev. Dr. Somerville of Currie, the great Patentee of the Safety Double Bloody Barrel, to preach the annual (' ' ■ sermon on th?.' '•'••■• — we are ^ng certain ma illustrai... ■ . ... ;i-e and progre.-> . of pastime in the soul, and leave our to draw the moral. But may we be pe to say, that the naughtiest schoolboys oJieii make the most pious men ; that it does no. follow according to the wise saws and modeii: instances of prophetic old women of both sexe;-, that he who in boyhood has worried a cr;t '.vith terriers, will, in manhood, commit mun'er on one of his own species; or that peccadillocf 10 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. are Ihe progenitors of capital crimes. Nature allows to growing lads a certain range of wick- edness, sans pcv.r et sans rcprochc. She seems, indeed, to whistle into their ear, to mock an- cient females — to laugh at Quakers — to make mouths at a descent man and his wife riding double to church — the matron's thick legs lu- dicrously bobbing from the pillion, kept firm ou Dobbin's rump bj- her bottom, '' ponderibus J.irata suis,^^ — to tip the wink to young women during sermon on Sunda}- — and on Saturday, most impertinently to kiss them, whether the)' v:i\\ or no, on high-road or by-jiath — and to per- pr-trate many other little nameless enormities. No doubt, at the time, such things will wear rather a suspicious character ; and the boy who is detected in the fact, must be punished b)' pawmy, or privation, or imprisonment from pla}'. But when punished, he is of course left free to resume his atrocious career; nor is it found that he sleeps a whit the less soundlj-, or shrieks for Heaven's mercy in his dreams. Conscience is not a craven. Groans belong to guilt. But fnn and frolic, even when tres- passes, are not guilt ; and though a cat have nine lives, she has but one Ghost — and that will haunt no house where there are terriers. What ! surely if j-ou have the happiness of being a parent you would not wish }'0ur only boy — your son and heir — the blended image of his mother's loveliness and his father's manly beautj' — to be a smug, smooth, prim, and proper prig, with his hair always combed down on his forehead, hands always unglaured, and without spot or blemish on his white-thread stockings 1 You would not wish him, sureh', to be always moping and musing in a corner wiih a good book held close to his nose — bo- tanizing with his maiden aunts — doing the prett\- at tea-tables with tabbies, in handing ro-jnd the short-bread, taking cups, and attend- ing to the kettle — telling tales on all naughty boys and girls — laying up his penny a-week pocket-money in a penny pig — keeping all his clothes neatly folded up in an untumbled drawer — having his own peg for his uncrushed hat — saying his prayers precisely as the clock si.ikes nine, while his companions are 3'et at blmd-man's buff — and puffed up ever}^ Sabbath- eve by the parson's praises of his uncommon memor}' for a sermon — while all the other boys are scolded for having fallen asleep before Tenthly] You would not wish him, surely, 10 write sermons himself at his tender years, nay — even to be able to give you chapter and verse for every quotation from the Bible ? No. Better far that he should begin early to break your heart, by taking no care even of his Sun- day clothes — blottinghis copy — impiously pin- ning pieces of paper to the Dominie's tail, who to him was a second father — going to the fish- in? not only without leave but against orders — bathing in the forbidden pool, where the tai- 'or was drowned — dri'ing powder before the school-room fire, and blowing himself and wo crack-sculled cronies to the ceiling — tj-ing settles to the tails of dogs — shooting an old woman's laying hen — galloping bare-backed shelties down stony steeps — climbing trees to Ihe slenderest twig on which bird could build, PI d up the tooth-of-time-intended sides of old castles after wall-flowers and starlings — being run away with in carts by colts against turn- pike gates — buying bad ballads from young gips}--girls, who, on receiving a sLspence, give ever so many kisses in return, saying, " Tak" j-our change out of that;" — on a. borrowed broken-knee'd pony, with a switch-tail — a de- vil for galloping — not only attending country- races for a saddle and collar, tut eatering for and winning the prize — dancing like a devil in barns at kirns — seeing his blooming partner home over the blooming heather, most perilous adventure of all in which virgin-pubert)- can be involved — fighting with a rival in corduroy breeches, and poll shorn beneath a caup, till his eyes just twinkle through the swollen blue — and, to conclude " this strange eventful his- tory," once brought home at one o'clock in the morning, God knows whence or by Whom, and found b}' the shrieking servant, sent out to listen for him in the moonlight, dead-drunk on the gravel at the gate I Nay, start not, parental reader — nor, in the terror of anticipation, send, without loss of a single day, for your son at a distant academy, maj-hap pursuing even such another careen Trust thou to the genial, gracious, and benign vis medicatrix naturce. What though a fe'w clouds bedim and deform "the innocent brightness of the new-born day?" Lo! how splendid the meridian ether ! What though the frost seem to blight the beauty of the budding and blow- ing rose 1 Look how she revives beneath dew, rain, and sunshine, tUl j-our eyes can even scarce endure the lustre ! What though the waters of the sullen fen seem to pollute th? snow of the swan 1 They faU off from her ex- panded wings, and, pure as a -spirit, she soars awa}', and descends into her own silver lake, stainless as the water-lilies floating round her breast. And shall the immortal soul suffer lasting contamination from the transient chances of its nascent state — in this, less fa- voured than material and immaterial things that perish 1 No — it is undergoing endless transmigrations, — even,' hour a being differ- ent, j-et the same — dark stains blotted out — rueful inscriptions effaced — many an erasure of impressions once thought permanent, but soon altogether forgotten — and vindicating, in the midst of the earthly corruption in which it is immersed, its own celestial origin," charac- ter, and end, often flickering, or seemingly blown out, like a taper in the wind, but all at once self-reillumined, and shining in inextin guishable and self-fed radiance — like a star in heaven. Therefore, bad as boys too often are — and a disgrace to the mother who bore them — the cradle in which they were rocked — the nurse by whom they were suckled — the schoolmas- ter by whom they were ilogged — and the hang- man by whom it was prophesied they were tc be executed — wait patiently for a few years., and you will see them ail transfigured — one into a preacher of such winning eloquence, that he almost persuades all men to be Chris- tians — another into a parliamentary orator, who commands the applause of listening sen- ates, and "Reads bis history in a nation's eyes," CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET. 11 •one into a painter, before whose thunderous neavens the storms of Poussin " pale their inef- fectual fires" — another into a poet composing and pla)ung, side by side, on his own peculiar harp, in a concert of vocal and instrumental music, with B3'ron, Scott, and Wordsworth — one into a great soldier, who, when Welling- ton is no more, shall, for the freedom of the world, conquer a future Waterloo — another who hoisted his flag on the " mast of some tall ammiral," shall, like Eliab Harvey in the Te- meraire, lay two three-deckers on board at once, and clothe some now nameless peak or promontory in immortal glory, like that shining on Trafalgar. Well, then, after cat-killing comes Coursing. Cats have a look of hares — kittens of leverets — and they are all called Pussy. The terriers are useful still, preceding the line like skirmish- ers, and with finest noses startling the mawkin^ from bracken-bush or rush bower, her sky- light garret in the old quarry, or her brown study in the brake. Awaj^ with 3'-our coursing on Marlborough downs, where huge hares are seen squatted from a distance, and the sleek dogs, disrobed of their gaudy trappings, are let slip by a Tiyer, running for cups and collars before lords and ladies, and squires of high and low degree — a prett}^ pastime enough, no doubt, in its waA", and a splendid cavalcade. But will it for a moment compare with the sudden and all-unlooked-for start of the "auld witch" from the bunweed-covered lea, when the throat of every pedestrian is privileged to cry " halloo — halloo — halloo" — and v-hipcord- tailed greyhound and hairy lurcher, withoiit an_v invidious distinction of birth or bearing, lay their deep breasts to the sward at the same moment, to the same instinct, and brattle over the brae after the disappearing Ears, laid flat at the first sight of her pursuers, as with re- troverted eyes she turns her face to the moun- tain, and seeks the cairn only. a little lower than the falcon's nest. What signifies an)' sport in the open air, except in congenial scenery of earth and heaven ] Go, thou gentle Cockney ! and angle in the New River ; — but, bold Englishman, come with us and try a salmon-cast in the old Ta)'. Go, thou gentle Cockney * and course a suburban hare in the purlieus of Blackheath ; — but, bold Englishman, come with us and course an animal that never heard a city-bell, by day a hare, by night an old woman, that loves the dogs she dreads, and, hunt her as you will with a leash and a half of lightfoots, still returns at dark to the same form in the turf-dike of the garden of the mountain cottage. The children, who love her as their OM-n eyes — for she has been as a pet about the family, summer and winter, since that chubby-cheeked urchin, of some five years old, first began to swing in his self-rocking cradle — will scarcelj- care to see her started — nay, one or two of the wickedest among them v^-ill join in the halloo; *'or often, ere this, " has she cheated the very lOwlers, and lauched ower her shouther at the ang dowgs walloping ahint her, sair forfa- quhen, up the benty brae — and it's no the day that she's gaun to be killed by Rough Robin, »r smooth Spring, or the red Bick, or the haiiy Lurcher — though a' fowr be let lowse on her at ance, and ye surround her or she rise." What are your great, big, fat, lazy English hares, ten or twelve pounds and upwards, who have the food brought to their very mouth in preserves, and are out of breath with five minutes' scamper among themselves — to the middle-sized, hard-hipped, wiry-backed, steel- legged, long-winded mawkins of Scotland, that scorn to taste a leaf of a single cabbage in the wee moorland yardie that shelters them, tut prey in distant fields, take a breathing every gloaming along the mountain-breast, untire'd as j'oung eagles ringing the sky for pastime and before the dogs seem not so much scour ing for life as for pleasure, Avith such an air of freedom, libertj-, and independence, do they fling up the moss and cock their fuds in the faces of their pursuers. Yet stanch are they to the spine — strong in bone, and sound in bottom — see, see how Tickler clears that tAventv-feet moss-hag at a single sparg like a bird — tops that hedge that Avould turn any hunter that ever stabled in Melton Mowbray — and then, at full speed northward, moves as upon a pivot within his oAvn length, and close upon his haunches, AA-ithout losing a foot, off within a point of due south. A kennel! He never AA'as and never Avill be in a kennel all his free joyful days. He has Avalked and run — and leaped and swam about — at his own Avill, ever since he was nine days old — and he would have done so sooner had he had any eyes. None of your stinking cracklets for him — he takes his meals with the family, sit- ting at the right hand of the master's eldest son. He sleeps in any bed of the house he chooses; and, though no Methodist, he goes every third Sunday to church. That is the- education of a Scottish greyhound — and the consequence is, that you may pardonably mis- take him for a deer dog from Badenoch or Lochaber, and no doubt in the world that he would rejoice in a glimpse of the antlers on the Aveather gleam, " Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trode To his hills that encircle the sea." This may be called roughing it — slovenly — coarse — rude — artless — unscientific. But we say no — it is your only coursing. Gods ! with what a bounding bosom the schoolboy salutes the daAvning of the cool — clear — crisp, yes, crisp October morn, (for there has been a slight frost, and the almost leafless hedgerows are all glittering with rime;) and, little time lost at dress or breakfast, crams the luncheon into his pouch, and away to the Trysting-hill Farmhouse, Avhich he fears the gamekeeper and his greAA's AA'ill haA^e left ere he can run across the tAvo long Scotch miles of moor be-- tAA^een him and his joy! With steps elastic, he feels flying along the sward as from a spring-board; like a roe, he clears the burns- and bursts his way through the brakes pant- ing, not from breathlessness but anxiety, he- lightly leaps the garden fence AA-ithout a pole,, and lo, the green jacket of one huntsman, the red jacket of another, on the plat before the door, and two or three tall raAA'boned poachers — and there is mirth and music, fun and frolic, and the very soul of enterprise, adventure, and 12 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER TsORTH. /■ desperation, in that word — while tall and graceful stand the black, the brindled, and the yellow breed, with keen }-et quiet e^ves, pro- phetic of their destined prej', and though mo- tionless now as stone statues of hounds at the feet of Meleager, soon to launch like lightning at the loved halloo ! Out comes the gudewife with her own bottle from the press in the spence, with as big a belly and broad a bottom as her own, and they are no trifle — for the worthy woman has been making much beef for many years, is more- over in the family waj-, and surely this time there will be twins at least — and pours out a cant)' caulker for each crowing cron)', begin- ning with the gentle, and ending with the semple, that is our and herself; and better speerit never steamed in sma' still. She offers another with " hinny," by way of Athole brose ; but it is put off till evening, for coursing re- quires a clear head, and the same sobriety then adorned our youth that now dignifies our old age. The gudeman, although an elder of the kirk, and with as grave an aspect as suits that solemn ofiice, needs not much persuasion to let the flail rest for one day, anxious though he be to show the first aits in the market ; and donning his broad blue bonnet, and the short- est-tailed auld coat he can find, and taking his kent in his hand, he grufily gives WuUy his orders for a' things about the place, and sets off with the yonkers for a holyday. Not a man on earth who has not his own pastime, depend on't, austere as he may look ; and 'twould be well for this wicked world if no elder in it had a " sin that maist easily beset him," worse than what Gibby Watson's wife used to call his " awfu' fondness for the Grews !" And who that loves to walk or wander over the green earth, except indeed it merely be some sonaetteer or ballad-monger, if he had cime and could afford it, and lived in a toler- ably open countiy, would not keep, at the very least, three greyhounds'? No better eating than a hare, though old blockhead Burton — and he was a blockhead, if blockhead ever there was one in this world — in his Anatomy, chooses to call it melancholy meat. Did lie ever, by way of giving dinner a fair commence- ment, swallow a tureen of hare-soup with half a peck of mealy potatoes 1 If ever he did — and notwithstanding called hare melancholy meat, there can be no occasion whatever for now wishing him any further punishment. If he never did — then he was on earth the most unfortunate of men. England — as }-ou love us and yourself — cultivate hare-soup, without for a moment dreaming of giving up roasted hare well stuffed with stufiing, jelly sauce being handed round on a large trencher. But there is no such thing as melancholy meat — neither fish, flesh, nor fowl — provided only there be enough of it. Otherwise, the daintiest dish drives you to despair. But independently of spit, pot, and pan, what delight in even dauner- i.ng about the home farm seeking for a hare 1 It is quite an art or science. You must con- sult not only the wind and weather of to-day, but of the night before — and of ever)' day and aight back to last Sunday, when probably you were, prevented by the rain from going to church. Then hares shift the sites of their country seats every season. This month they love the fallow field — that, the stubble; this, you will see them, almost without looking for them, big and brown on the bare stony upland lea — that, you must have a hawk's eye in your head to discern, discover, detect them, like birds in their nests, embowered below the bunweed or the bracken ; they choose to spend this week in a wood impervious to wet or wind — that, in a marsh too plashy for the plover ; now you may depend on finding madam at home in the sulks within the very heart of a ^ bramble-bush or dwarf black-thorn thicket, while the squire cocks his fud at you from the top of a knowe open to blasts from all the airts ; — in short, he who knows at all tir.ies where to find a hare, even if he knew not one single thing else but the way to his mouth, cannot be called an ignorant man — is probably a better-informed man in the long run than the friend on his right, discoursing about the Turks, the Greeks, the Portugals, and all that sort of thing, giving himself the lie on every arrival of his daily paper. We never yet k-new an old courser, (him of the Sporting Annals included,) who was not a man both of abilities and virtues. But where were we 1 — at the Trysting-hill Farmhouse, jocularly called Hunger-them-Out. Line is formed, and with measured steps we march towards the hills — for we ourselves are the schoolbo)', bold, bright, and blooming as the rose — fleet of foot almost as the ver)' ante- lope — Oh ! now, alas ! dim and withered as a stalk from which winter has swept all the blossoms — slow as the sloth along the ground — spindle-shanked as a lean and slippered pantaloon ! "O heaven ! that from cur bright and shinin? years Age would but talie the things youth needed not:" An old shepherd meets us on the long, sloping rushy ascent to the hills — and putting his brown withered finger to his gnostic nose, in- timates that she is in her old form behind the dike — and the noble dumb animals, with pricked-up ears and brandished tail, are aware that her hour is come. Plash, plash, through the marsh, and then on the dry furze bevond, you see her large dark-brown eyes — Soho, soho, soho — HoUoo, halloo, halloo — for a mo- ment the seemingly horned creature appears to dally with the danger, and to linger ere she lays her lugs on her shoulder, and awa)-, like thoughts pursuing thoughts — away fly" hare and hounds towards the mountain. Stand all still for a minute — for not a bush the height of our knee to break our view — and is not that brattling burst up the brae " beauti- ful exceedingl)-," and sufiicient to chain in ad- miration the beatings of the rudest gazer's heart? Yes; of all beautiful sights — none more, none so much so, as the miraculous motion of a four-footed wild anima.. changed at once, from a seeming inert sod or stone, into flight fleet as that of the falcon's wing ! In- stinct against instinct ! fear and ferocity in one flight! Pursuers and pursued bound together, in every turning and twisting of their career, by the operation of two headlong pas- sions ! Now they are all three upon her — and CHRISTOPHER Es HIS SPORTING JACKET. 13 she dies! No! glancing aside, like a bullet l toral or silvan heiahts. If old or indolent, take from a wall, she bounds almost at a right an^le from her straight course — and, for a moment, seems to have made good her escape. Shooting headlong one over the other, all three, with erected "tails, suddenly bring themselves up — like racing barks when down goes the helm, and one after another, bowsprit and boom almost entangled, rounds the buoy, and again bears up on the starboard tack upon a wind — and in a close line, head to heel, so that you might cover them all with a sheet — again ; all open-mouthed on her haunches, seem to drive, and go with her over the clilf. We are all on foot — and pray what horse could gallop through among all these quag- mires, over all the hags in these peat-mosses, over all the water-cressy and puddocky ditches, sinking soft on hither and thither side, even to the two-legged leaper's ankle or knee — up that hill on the perpendicular strewn with flint- shivers — down these loose-hanging cliffs — through that brake of old stunted birches with stools hard as iron — over that mile of quaking muir where the plover breeds — and — finally — up — up — up to where the dwarfed heather dies away among the cinders, and in winter you might mistake a flock of ptarmigan for a patch of snow 1 The thing is impossible — so we are all on foot — and the fleetest keeper that ever footed it in Scotland shall not in a run of three miles give us sixty yards. " Ha ! Peter the wild boy, how are j'ou off for wind!" — we exult- ingly exclaim, in giving Red-jacket the go-by on the bent. But see — see — they are bringing her back again down the Red Mount — glancing aside, she throws them all three out — yes, all three, and few enow too, though fair play be a jewel — and ere they can recover, she is a-head a hundred yards up the hill. There is a beauti- ful trial of bone and bottom ! Now one, and then another, takes almost imperceptibly the lead; but she steals aM-ay from them inch by inch — beating them all blind — and, suddenly disappearing — Heaven knows how — leaves them all in the lurch. With out-lolling tongues, hanging heads, panting sides, and drooping tails, the)' come one by one down the steep, looking somewhat sheepish, and then lie down together on their sides, as if indeed about to die in defeat. She has carried away her cocked fud unscathed for the third time, from Three of the Best in all broad Scotland — nor can there any longer be the smallest doubt in the world, in the minds of the most skeptical, that she is — what all the country-side have long known her to be — a Witch. From cat-killing to Coursing, we have seen that the transition is easy in the order of na- ture — and so it is from coursing to Fox-Hunt- ing — by means, however, of a small interme- diate step — the Harriers. ^Musical is a pack of harriers as a peal of bells. How melo- diously the)' ring changes in the woods, and in the hollow of the mountains ! A level country we have already consigned to merited tontempt, (though there is no rule without an exception ; and as we shall see by and by, there is one too here,) and commend us, even vith harriers, to the ups and downs of the pas- your station on a heaven-kissing hill, and hug the echoes to your heart. Or, if you will ride, then let it be on a nimble galloway of some four teen hands, that can gallop a good pace on Xha road, and keep sure footing on bridle paths, oi upon the pathless braes — and by judicious horsemanship, you may meet the pack at many a loud-mouthed burst, and haply be not far out at the death. But the schoolboy and the shep- herd — and the whipper-in — as each hopes for favour from his own Diana — let them all be on foot — and have studied the country for every imaginable variety that can occur in the winter's campaign. One often hears of a cunning old - fox — but the cunningest old fox is a simpleton to the most guileless young hare. What deceit in every double ! What calculation in everj' squat ! Of what far more complicated than Cretan Lab3-rinth is the creature, now hunted for the first time, sitting in the centre ! a listen- , ing the baflied roar ! Now into the pool she plunges, to free herself from the fatal scent that lures on death. Now down the torrent course she runs and leaps, to cleanse it from her poor paws, fur-protected from the sharp flints that lame the fiends that so sorely beset her, till many limp along in their own blood. Now along the coping of stone walls she crawls and scrambles — and now ventures from tht wood along the frequented high-road, heedless of danger from the front, so that she may escape the horrid growling in the rear. Now into the pretty little garden of the wayside, or even the grillage cot, she creeps, as if to implore protec- tion from the innocent children, or the nursing mother. Yes, she will even seek refuge in the sanctuary of the cradle. The terrier drags her out from below a tombstone, and she dies in the churchyard. The hunters come reeking and reeling on, we ourselves among the num- ber — and to the winding horn that echoes reply from the walls of the house of worship — and now, in momentar)' contrition, "Drops a sad, serious tear upon our playful pen :' and we bethink ourselves — alas! all in vain for " J\~aturam eipellas furca, tamen usque recurret" — of these solemn lines of the poet of peace and humanitj' : — " One lesson reader, let us two divide, Taught by what ii iture shows and what conceals, Never to blend our pleasure and our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels." It is nexi to impossible to reduce fine poetry to practice — so let us conclude with a panc- gjTic on Fox-Hunting. The passion for this pastime is the very strongest that can possess the heart — nor, of' all the heroes of antiquity, is there one to our imagination more poetical than Nimrod. His whole character is given, and his whole histor}', in two words — Might}- Hun- ter. That he hunted the fox is not probable ; for the sole aim and end of his existence was not to exterminate — that would have been cut- ting his own throat — but to thin man-devour- ing wild beasts — the Pards — with Leo at then- head. But in a land like this, where not even a wolf has existed for centuries — nor a wild boar — the same spirit that would have driven the British youth on the tusk and paw of the li RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH. Lion and the Tiger, mounts them in scarlet on such steeds as never neighed before the flood, nor " summered high in bliss" on the sloping pastitres of undeluged Ararat — and gathers them together in gallant array on the edge of the cover, " Wlien first the luinter's startling horn is heard Upon the golden hills." What a squadron of cavalry ! What fiery eyes and flaming nostrils — betokening with -n-hat ardent passion the noble animals will revel in the chase ! Bay, brown, black, dun, chestnut sorrel, gray— of all shades and hues — and every courser distinguished by his own peculiar character of shape and form — yet all blending harmoniously as they crown the mount ; so that a painter would only have to group and colour them as they stand, nor lose, if able to catch them, one of the dazzling lights or deep- ening shadows streamed on them from that sunny, yet not unstormy sky. You read in books of travels and romances, of Barbs and Arabs galloping in the desert — and well doth Sir Walter speak of Saladin at the head of his Saracenic chivalry ; but take our word for it, great part of all such descrip- tions are mere falsehood or fudge. Why in the devil's name should dwellers in the desert always be going at full speed 1 And how can that full speed be any thing more than a slow heavy hand-gallop at the best, the barbs being up to the belly at every stroke 1 They are always, it is said, in high condition — but we, who know something about horse-tlesh, give that assertion the lie. They have seldom any thing either to eat or drink; they are as lean as church mice ; and covered with clammy sweat before they have ambled a league from tne tent. And then such a set of absurd riders, with knees up to their noses, like so many tailors riding to Brentford, via the deserts of Arabia! Such bits, such bridles, and such saddles ! But the whole set-out, rider and rid- den, accoutrements and all, is too much for one's gravity, and must occasion a frequent laugh to the wild ass as he goes braying un- harnessed bj'. But look there ! Arabian blood, and British bone ! Not bred in and in, to the death of all the fine strong animal spirits — but blood intermingled and interfused by twenty crosses, nature exulting in each succes- sive produce, till her power can no further go, and in yonder glorious grey, " Gives the world assurance of a horse '." Form the Three Hundred into squadron, or squadrons, and in the hand of each rider a sabre alone, none of your lances, all bare his breast but for the silver-laced blue, the gorge- ous uniform of the Hussars of England — con- found all cuirasses and cuirassiers ! — let the trumpet sound a charge, and ten thousand of ths proitdest of the Barbaric chivalry be op- posed with spear and scimitar — and through their snow-ranks will the Three Hundred go like thaw — splitting them into dissolution with he noise of thunder. The proof of the pudding is in the eating of t ; and where, we ask, were the British cavalry ever overthrown 1 And how could the great uorth-countiy horse-coupers perform their con- tracts, but for the triumphs of the Turf? Blood — blood there must be, either for strength, or sp^ed, or endurance. The very heaviest ca- valry — the Life Guards and the Scots Greys, and all other dragoons, must have blood. But without racing and fox-hunting, where could it be found] Such pastimes nerve one of the arms of the nation when in battle ; but for them 'twould be palsied. What better education, too, not only for a horse, but his rider, before playing a bloodier game in his first war cam- paign ] Thus he becomes demicorpsed with the noble animal ; and what easy, equable motion to him is afterwards a charge over a wide level plain, with nothing in the way but a few regiments of flying Frenchmen ! The hills and dales of merry England have been the best riding-school to her gentlemen — her gentlemen who have not lived at home at ease — but, with Paget, and Stewart, and Se}Tnour, and Cotton, and Somerset, and Vivian, have left their hereditary halls, and all the peaceful pastimes pursued among the silvan scenery, to try the mettle of their steeds, and cross swords with the vaunted Gallic chivalry ; and still have they been in the shock victorious ; witness the skirmish that astonished Napoleon at Saldanha — the overthrow that uncrowned him at Waterloo ! " Well, do you know, that, after all you have said, Mr. North, I cannot understand the passion and the pleasure of fox-hunting. It seems to me both cruel and dangerous." Cruelty ! Is their cruelty in laying the rein on their necks, and delivering them up to the transport of their high condition — for every throbbing vein is visible — at the first full burst of that maddening cry, and letting loose to their delight the living thunderbolts 1 Danger! What danger but of breaking their own legs, necks, or backs, and those of their riders 1 And what right have you to complain of that, lying all your length, a huge hulking fellow, snoring and snorting half-asleep on a sofa, sufficient to sicken a whole street? What though it be but a smallish, reddish-brown, sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, and passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue ? After the first Tall)--ho, Reynard is rarely seen, till he is rtm in upon — once, perhaps, in the whole run, skirting a wood, or crossing a com- mon. It is an Idea that is pursued, on a whirl- wind 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 ofl'and away — while wood and welkin rings — and nothing is felt — nothing is imaged in that hurricane flight, but r.corn 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 Chris- tian country. There they go — prince and peer, baronet and squire — the nobility and gentry ol England, the flower of the men of the earth, each on such a steed as Pollux never reined, nor Philip's warlike son — for could we imagine CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTIJNCJ JACKET. Bucephalus here, ridden by his own tamer, Alexander would be thrown out during the very first burst, and glad to find his way dis- mounted to a village alehouse for a pail of meal and water. Hedges, trees, groves, gar- dens, orchards, woods, farmhouses, 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 run- ners — and a hundred villages pour forth their admiring swarms, as the main current of the chase roars by, or disparted runlets float wea- ried and all astray, lost at last in the perplexing woods. Crash goes the top-timber 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 atfecting indeed — but Pylades eyes Orestes on his back sorely drowned in sludge, and tenderly leaping over him as he lies, claps his hands to his ear, and with a " hark forward, tantivy !" leaves him to remount, lama and at leisure — and ere the fallen has risen and shaken him- self, is round the corner of the white village- church, 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 win- dows in a still room, the clergyman in 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 branch 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 }'ield 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 cliifs unscalable by the very Welch goat ; let duke's or earl's son go sheer over a quarr}'- twenty 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, 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 n the general growl ; and smug, and smooth, and dry, and warm, and cozey, as he was an hour and twenty-five minutes ago exactly, in his furze bush in the cover — he is now piece- meal in about thirty distinct stomachs ; and is ne not, pray, well otffor sepulture 1 FYTTR SECOND. We are always unwilling to speak of our- selves, lest we should appear egotistical — for egotism we detest. Yet the sporting world must naturally be anxious to know something of our early histor}-- — and their anxiety shall therefore be now assuaged. The truth is, that we enjoyed some rare advantages and oppor- tunities 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 Avere ten boys of lis, 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 5'ear. They must have been of admirable materials and work- manship; for neither of them so much as once burst during the Seven Years' War. The mus- ket, who, we have often since thought, must surely rather have been a blunderbuss in dis- guise, 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 choose 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 afl^ectiou andadmira tion of us all, that faults like these did not in the least detract from her general character.* Out delight, when she did absolutely and positively and bona fide go off, was in proportion to the; comparative rarity of that occurrence; and a;; 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 sutficed, eyes shut perhaps, teeth clenched, face girning, and head slightly averted over the right shoulder, till Muckle-mou'd Meg, who, like most other Scot- tish females, took things leisurely, went oft" at last with an explosion like the blowing up of a rock. The " Lang gun," again, was of much gen- tler disposition, and, instead of kicking, ran into the opposite extreme on being let off, in- clining forwards as if she would follow the shot. We believe, however, this apparent peculiarit}'- arose from her extreme length, which rendered it difficult for us to hold her horizontally — and hence the muzzle being at- tracted earthward, the entire gun appeared to leave the shoulder of the Shooter. That such 16 RECREATIONS OF CHRISTOPHER NORTH r is the true theor}^ of the phenomenon seems to be proved by this — that when the " Lang Gun" was, in the act of firing, laid across the shoul- iers 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 pull- ing 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 cir- cumvoluting twine, 'twas alwayscDggly. Thus, too, the vizy {Anglicc sight) gene'."ally 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 gal- loping of cattle on the hills ; and we hear now the 3^ell of an old woman in black bonnet and red cloak, who shook her staif at us like a witch, v/ith the blood running down the furrows of her face, and with many oaths maintained that she was murdered. The " Lang Gun" had cer- tainly a strong vomit — and, with slugs or swan-shot, was dangerous at two hundred yards to any living thing. Bob Howie, 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 I'ust of oblivion. Not a boy in the school had a game certifi- t