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My friend was counting out the money, when a new victim of the law of 1790 presented himself. This man was condemned to the confiscation of his gun, and he presented to the clerk an old match-lock, which had doubtless done its duty at Saint Barthélemy.

"What old iron is this?" said the clerk.

"Sir, it is my gun, since the tribunal will have it so. Apparently you can't afford to buy guns, that you rob poor devils like me of theirs."

"But, my good fellow, you never hunted with this?"

"Did'nt I though-but its too hard-the fine, the costs, the gun that's more than a double-it's a treble shot. The judges are better

shots than I."

"I can't take this for a gun-this rusty lump of iron can't be your fowling-piece; you must bring me a fusil raisonnable (these were the clerk's words) or fifty francs.'

"Fifty francs! where am I to get them?"

"That's none of my business.'

"If both parties are agreeable," observed my friend, "I buy this gun."

Good," said the poor hunter," and Monsieur Houdetot is not bête; you will see next time he turns out, he will kill more than any other sportsman."

It was at breakfast, on the first of January, 1843, that my friend related the above circumstance.

"So the poor fellow thought you bought the cannon to fowl with," said one of the guests.

"Certainly, though to be sure it is rather heavy; it weighs four times one of ours."

"Why not take it out; it would have been rare sport to see you miss every shot."

"And who told you I should miss ?"

"I think it probable."

"Well I will bet with you, we will shoot together; you shall have your Devisme, I my arquebuss of the days of Charles IX., and I lay I kill as much as you."

"Done: a dinner at discretion for the whole company."

"Yes: the winner to select the materials-he shall have carte blanche."

"Agreed."

whose

"By the by, there is our excellent anglo-gallic friend studies in gastronomy have been both regular and profound; we'll leave the selection of the banquet to him."

"Very well," replied I: " in eight days be it so. I will write to Paris to-morrow. Thanks to the progress of civilization, the number of venders of comestibles increases every day, and I shall have all I desire in no time. My head has carved out the dishes already-a monstrous turbot, a giant salmon, a fabulous trout; game of course -fowls such as were never seen; it isn't the season of truffles-but, thanks to late inventions, there are no seasons. The wine shall be delicious, the dessert sublime. I have carte blanche-loser beware of your pocket."

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Both were sure of winning.

"But," said I, 66 you have bet that one will kill more than the other. If neither kills anything?"

"If I kill nothing," said Houdetot, " I have lost."

On returning from the day's hunt, Houdetot ordered his servant to sit up all night cleaning the old gun; next day it was in tolerable order, with a bundle of lighted rope-yarns for a match.

"Before we risk anything," said I, "let us try him in the garden."

I put in a double charge of powder and lead; I rammed hard; I placed the gun against a tree, fastened it, and with a pole fired it. A six-pounder would have made less noise and effect; a portion of the garden wall fell in; the whole populace were in agitation. If in St. Quentin there had been a powder-mill, the inhabitants would have believed it blown up; but as there is no powder-mill, it would have required a Yankee power of imagination to believe one had blown up. "The gun is good," said I, "but beware of your shoulders; see how the stock has ploughed up the ground; if your cheek and humerus suffer thus, you will be in bed before night."

"Never mind-I'll take care; to the rendezvous."

Two umpires accompanied each to decide on their relative merits, and two men walked behind Houdetot, carrying his gun. "You ought to carry your own gun," said his antagonist.

"Its too heavy."

"So much the better. I counted upon that."

"I appeal to our friends. The terms of the wager oblige me to kill as much game as you, or to kill one if you kill none that is its extent."

The fields reached, they separated, the crowd following Houdedot, and betting on his great gun. At St. Quentin they are devoured by the mania of betting; they wager, when hunting, their powder-horns, dog, waistcoat, pantaloons, payable at sight, so that more than one sportsman has been seen coming home in a coach, in default of other covering. We followed Houdedot some twenty yards behind, while he with his two porters advanced, preceded by his bitch Finette; she sets; Houdetot seizes the arquebuss; two old partridges flew up: he pulls the trigger, and when the birds were about a quarter of a mile off, the piece went off. What a report! We were in the neighbourhood of the military school of La Fere-doubtless it was thought they had fired a salute.

"Well," said I," the cheek and the humerus."

"All right."

"Diminish the load."

"By no means-the heavier the load, the more chance."

"But your gun goes off half an hour after the partridges have disappeared."

"Why, there was a lump of cinders at the end of the match, that won't occur again."

"Fire directly Finette sets, and perhaps chance may have it, the shot will go off at the same time as the partridges."

The rest declared he would lose his bet.

"Safe not to, gentlemen; I will take two to one with any of you." Twenties, fifties, hundreds, of francs, were voluntered and accepted; the gun was loaded, and we proceeded. We were in a field of clover, Finette gave the signal, Houdetot seized the gun, approached the match to his lips, blew off the cinders, the covey rose, a spark fell on the pan, the gun went off, and five partridges fell dead; the gun fell also from the fowler's hands.

"Victoire-I have won. B, my friend, I make you responsible for the dinner; if it is not magnificent your reputation is lost." "You have not yet won," said one of the betters, " if M

more than you."

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"He never killed three in a day-howbeit I shoot no more with this."

"Quite right," said I, " two such shots don't happen in one day." We now followed the other fortune-hunter, who was blazing away on all sides. We came up, examined his bag-it was empty. "Not at all," said he, "I have a young partridge.' We examined again, and found an unlucky juvenile of the breed alluded to.

"That can't count," observed I.

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"Certainly it does," said Houdetot; "it ought to count, and shall Kill four more and I am beat M-; but as I wish to amuse myself, I shall take my fowling-piece and fire after you, and will lay another dinner I kill three to one."

66

"I would rather be excused-the first was enough."

I shall spare my readers the rest of the episode. Our friend did slay another old and venerable partridge, predestined to die that day; and when night came we returned to St. Quentin, the victor with two and a half brace, the vanquished with three quarters of a pair.

The dinner was magnificent-I spared nothing-since I had two motives to impel me-my gastronomic reputation, and the gastric juices; and, believe me, none enjoyed it better than the caterer.

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The reader has, six-score of times during the last six months, inquired of himself-insisted upon an answer from himself to his question-"How is it the Sporting Reviewer hath laid aside his

craft?" We heard it as plainly as if we had been Fine Ear of the fairy tale. For half a year we have writ no criticism, for the which we could assign many goodly reasons; but we deem it necessary only to offer one (as satisfactory, probably, as a thousand)-we had none to

write.

The paper panic of 1825, and the paper panic of 1843, shall long render those seasons memorable for the depression of rags. Where, ten years ago, the busy months poured forth their centenaries of volumes; where-good, bad, and indifferent-the annual publishing season issued its epic and its tragedy, its poems and novels, its travels and researches, its countless memoirs and correspondences, its essays and sermons, its scientific treatises, and its geological tracts; the press seems now with difficulty parturient of an odd production or two, fashioned without care or thought; servile copies, in nothing original, save perhaps, the want of intrinsic merit, and the utter absence of wit and humour and learning; offspring of the brain, without the hands and feet, the eyes and the cars, and the faculties to preserve them from perishing; books, fac-similes of those that had gone before, only without their gist-like accurately repeated jests in all but the point; Minervas, not born cap-a-pic, alas! but who pilfer from their progenitors every weapon they wield. Most of us can recall the period when literature was the most exciting problem of the day; the current coin of conversation at the noon-day call, or evening's reunion. We remember when the certain theme of speculation was Scott's coming novel, Byron's last canto, Rogers's revival of the system of illustrated works; when the poems of the latter, and Campbell's, and Southey's, and Wordsworth's, were discussed as part of the morning meal; and the subtleties of Coleridge, or Godwin's latest theorem of the mind, or Jeffries's biting critiques, or Charles Lamb's gentle essays, were ever startling or delighting the neophytes of learning; when Leigh Hunt's fairy-land optimism welled through the walls of the King's Bench prison, and Jeremy Bentham's splenetic exposition of legal fallacies thundered from his octogenarian bed-chamber; when Cobbett and Colman were still in popular favour; when publishers, in short, waxed munificent, and became more proud of their authors than these of their works. It was then that readers gave three times the price of the hire for the privilege of cutting the wet sheets of the Ballantyne-press novel, and were sure to be recompensed a thousand-fold by its perusal. The demand for literary food was an almost insane cry, and printer and publisher, writer and reader, joined in the common frenzy. Then was invented the high-pressure engine on brain; in the operation of which health and common sense were sacrificed to avarice, and the intellect was treated like a mail-coach when additional horses are put on to increase its speed. The reaction is now in progress; we have fallen upon the evil days of the press, the second childishness of authorship. We have writers without books, lukewarm booksellers, unenthusiastic readers. Literature is now a stagnant pool, where once its sparkling waters flowed direct from Helicon. If it is not a defunct profession, it is engulphed in the gigantic whirlpool of journalism. Authors have turned old women, and repeat themselves to an

extent that makes Shakspeare's adage, "Life is as tedious as a twice told tale" quite out of date.

We have in brief, attempted to "show cause" for the fact, that while we still possess a galaxy of living names, which will vibrate on the tympanum of memory long as our language echoes in the cars of the children of men, they keep "the word of promise to the ear, but break it to the hope"-why, in a legitimate sense in short, we have no books to review. And now, ere we fitly welcome certain graceful ephemera of winter, the courtly annuals, shrines of the art of the engraver, but lately issued from the press of Messrs. Longman and Co., we avail ourselves of the opportunity of clearing off an old score or two. We have nothing to say of Mr. Mills's last novel, "the Stage Coach or the Road of Life," because, like others of its ilk, it is off the road.

W. Blackwood

We

The Book of the Farm. BY HENRY STEPHENS. and Sons, Edinburgh and London. Several parts have reached us of this work. We defer to next month a notice of all but the fourteenth. This is a valuable number. It treats "Of the Lambing of Ewes," "Turning Dunghills and Composts," "Sowing Barley-seed," "Hiring Farm Servants," "Construction of Thorn-hedges," &c. opine that the intelligence of the ordinary farmer will scarcely embrace the extent and depth of science in this work. Mr. Stephens seems to have consummate experience in agricultural experiments, and a kind of ubiquitous information that is quite wonderful. We recommend our readers to turn to a curious account in this number of the grub that infests the oat-crop, and the part relative to the sowing of oat-seed. We shall give extracts next month.

Heath's Picturesque Annual for 1844, being the American in Paris during the summer; a companion to the Winter in Paris. By Mons. JULES JANIN, &c., &c. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.

A

This is a charming book- a bonne bouche of the times. translated work not deficient in the spirit of the original: a courtly work written in the zealous love of citizen kingship; and yet bold, free, and faithful in almost every outline. It is written off-hand, as a journalist indites his leading article; and it possesses the excellences and a few of the defects of this species of composition. We know of no better guide-book of Paris than these two volumes of M. Janin's. We know of no more elegant drawing room companion than this book of two-fold graphic portraiture; this union of the genius of Eugène Lami and that of the practised littérateur. As the annual of 1843 described one phase of Parisian society, that of 1844 gives us another. In the latter, sketches are taken true to the life of the delightful villeggiature in the environs of the French capital. In the peculiar turn for analysis common to our neighbours, M. Janin gives a history of the past and an augury for the future from the features of the present. Ever the eulogist of the people's king, he labours to show that the policy of Louis Philippe is equal to that of Louis the

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