Come Jew with thy rings and chains so fine—
Come snob, come tailor, come one, come all,
Every nod I'll honour, return each call,
If penance so heavy but save me can
From the sportsman's bane-the sporting man.

Let me jostle the crowd upon Ludgate's hill,
To see aldermen riding to "Eat-and-swill :"
In bodily fear more of might than right,
Let me witness a mill-literatim, a fight;
Or, oppressed with shop-boys, heat and spleen,
In Adelphi's pit let me watch the scene;
Or, as usher, in vain endeavour to rule
The imps at a thriving "Commercial school;'
Or swallow the speeches, meats, and creed,
Brought out at a grand political feed-
Come, what you will, anywhere and when,
But a sporting house full of sporting men.

To resume-friend Acteon, a plain country squire,
With a love for the rural that nothing could tire;
With a nice little income, in money paid down,
Quite enough for a man not "a man about town ;"
Hung out in a cottage, snug, cosey, and neat,

In the market, no doubt, they would call it "a seat;"
A cottage content to sport some such a label
As, "a good eight-room house, with a sixteen-stall stable."
Here he shot, hunted, fished, taking season for season,
But ne'er marking his game at a price beyond reason;
Made his purse fit his pleasures, his pleasures his purse,
Feared no bills overdue, need no property "nurse;"
And in short managed all on that capital plan,

66

With his bankers a safe," with the sex "a sweet man."
Aye! despite dogs and horses, crowds of mothers and daughters
Looked at Tally-ho Lodge as "uncommon nice" quarters.

Hinted, joking of course, with an eye slightly slanting,
There was one piece of furniture sadly yet wanting

And then Jane played the chorus, Emmy sang "Chanticleer,”
Or Fan larked her pony-" such a sweet little dear ;"

While old mother Gracch-something had always "just been to"

him,

To call, or invite, or-to stick Susan into him.

Alas! that pride should have a fall;

Alas! that the envy of 'em all,

So proof to all their traps and crosses,

Should yield still more to dogs and horses;

Or, as Glaucopis set the case,

"What a pity he's so much attached to the chase."

Kean's life has started many an actor,
Jack Sheppard's many a malefactor;

Childe Harold Byron's fierce men-haters,
Cook's voyagers fresh navigators;

The hunting tours "took "e'en with Schneiders,
And writing of 'em made "crack riders ;"
Old Isaac's lines have wetted many a line,
And jocks been formed from "Genius Genuine."
Our instance, though, is yet more classic a
One-'tis the Notitia Venatica—-

A work that a vast deal of merit has,
And proves the saw, in Vyner Veritas."
Its point, however, is simply this,
That to arrive at perfect bliss
In the true pleasure of the chase,
You mustn't take a second place ;
But having somehow got the knack,
Keep, hunt, and feed yourself the pack,
Showing an M.F.H. to be,

The happiest man that " you shall see :"
Acteon read it.*.

Of all the

many

arts and ways

That lead a man to proper glory,
How few so soon shall" reach the case,'
Like that great knack-to tell a story;
The Attic salt, the fit expression.

The rhythm neat—if told in song-
And then that crowning nice discretion
That makes the story not too long.
Discretion! dear sweet brown bread saint!
Thou guardian of our love and life;
Who keeps the maiden "fresh as paint"
'Till fairly owned and known a wife;
Who hedges off the leg's grand "pot,"
And makes his book to smell of mint ;
Who marks the actor, stays the sot,
And bows the poet into print-
Discretion unknown, wondrous maid!
Stretch forth a hand e'er yet too late,
For one who now first asks your aid,
And save him from his hero's fate;

With smallish means what great effrontery,
Notes him who dares to hunt a country-
Hounds, horses, servants, open house,
Earth-stoppers, keepers-"safe" to chouse-

* We have his copy, a very curious black letter one, of the original edition, which a great great ancestor of our own bought at the sale in a lot with some couples and blacking bottles.

Balls, banquets, Gunter, Julien down,
With hosts of artistes straight from town;
Donations, plates for hunters' stakes,
With plenty more in "ducks and drakes ;"
Which will, of course, be paid off, one and all,
By "the subscription "-query, nominal?

Acteon stood it just three years,

And then-o'ercome with costs and cares,
And duns and bums, and foxes few,

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Short-answering," slaves with wages due,
And "fields" that looked uncommon blue-
At eve, when o'er a poor day's sport,
And o'er as poor a glass of port
(For out, alas! "the favourite sort "),
Owned to himself the soft delusion,
And having come to this conclusion,
Laid down his horn with half a curse,
Hung up his whip, pulled off his spurs,
Then, like a cock, his feathers moulted,
Packed up his saddle-bags and-bolted.

Farther than this the fable goes,
And in its version boldly shows,
How with a cry so full and grim,
The hounds set to and hunted him,
Ran him at length from scent to view,
And "broke him up" with small to do;
Yet, though the Muster's* case is clear,
The other can't pass muster here.
The eating up a man is common
Enough, by horse, or hound, or woman;
Or even in some situations,

By his own friends and dear relations;
But still the phrase the fact transgresses,

When in such terms "a smash" expressed is

Enough to prove on what allegory

The ancients pitched so strong a story.

Be as it may-quite eaten up,

Or only out of house and home

By friends who stop to dine and sup,
Still to this point at last we come.
Do what you will-fight, drink, or play,
Your fortune somehow to get through ;

Spend it the most immoral way,
There always is a moral too.

When in the next new comedy

The scampish character comes on,
With swaggering air and manner free,
That on the stage must pass for ton.

* The well known anecdote of Mr. Muster and his hounds, as see the Notitia.

When the father gives his glad consent
For Scamp to take Sophia in marriage,
And tells to his friend the great event,

And how the suitor keeps his carriage:
Mark, then, that friend with wary eye,
Give out this well-worn, honoured whim—
"Sir David, hark, 'twixt you and I,
The carriage 'tis that's keeping him."

So gentlemen all, with incomes but small,
Who don't want to fall, or go to the wall,
But weather a squall, and keep up the ball;
Attend to my lay, and mind what I say,

As to making your play for more than a day,
And being able to pay your share and your way.
If twice out a week with the pack within hail,
And sport in proportion supposed to be shown,
Finds you still rather prone to grumble and rail,
And, like Nelson, you

want " a gazette of your own ;"

With subscriptions collected,
And kennels erected,

With a nerve to ride screws,

"On the fast and the loose,"

And people that really come out for the fun;
With lodgings let cheap,

Just to breakfast and sleep;
Then a heart for your sport,
And on something this sort

Of plan the thing has been, and is to be, done.

And now, as the poet sighs adieu,
Remember well his council true,
And with Actæon's fate in view,

If you keep hounds let hounds keep you.

THE APPROACHING GROUSE SEASON IN SCOTLAND;

OR A FEW WORDS FROM THE MOUNTAINS.

BY HAWTHORN.

"Scotland, thou land of the mountain and rock,
Of the ocean, the mist, and the wind;

Thou land of the torrent, the pine, and the oak,

Of the roebuck, the hart, and the hind.

Though bare are thy cliffs, and though barren thy glens,

Though bleak thy dun islands appear,

Yet noble the deer, and unnumbered the grouse,

That roam o'er thy mountains so drear."

in Scotland, and over all her highland district of country, contains by Perthshire, our dearly loved Perthshire, is one of the largest counties far the best grouse shooting in Scotland. The scenery of Perthshire,

as has been partly hinted, and as can scarcely fail to be inferred from the general contour of the country, is surprisingly varied, and almost uniformly rich, and of every class, from the sublimely wild or romantic to the softly champaign and beautiful; and of every style, from the sternest or most nakedly magnificent, to the fullest of amenities, and lusciousness, and ornament. Excepting only that of Lock Lomond, nearly all the really fine lake scenery of Scotland occurs in Perthshire, and without any exception whatever, the county's aggregate blendings of mountain, and wood, and water into pictures of magnificence and romance, are quite unmatched as to either extent or effect in any other district of Britain. Who that gazes upon the type of all the glorious things which burst upon the eye at Killin, or at the debouch from the Trossacks, will ever again speak in superlatives of the brilliantly pretty Derwent-water, or the calmly beautiful Windermere, or the sullenly pleasant Ulles-water, or any select sheet or point whatever of the Westmoreland lakes? Then as to river scenery, where but in Perthshire shall be found such tumultuous assemblage of rocky eminences, all of whimsical and fantastic form, studded with trees and shrubs, and grouped in the very confusion of boskiness and romance, with wondrous overshadowing hill-screens as occur at the Trossacks at the head of Strath-earne, and on the river Karnnock? or such closely approaching and sheer alpine descents, bringing down sheets of forest from the clouds, and standing with their bases on the margin of rapids and cataracts, as in the wild glens of the Tummel and the Tilt? or such uninterrupted lines of distinctive landscape, ever varying, in all styles, now close, and now expanding playfully, and almost whimsically various in the disposal of a profusion of wood, at first highland, afterwards and long debateably highland and lowland, and eventually subsiding into the more luscious and ornate champaign, as occurs along Strath-tay? or such tremendous defiles, such protuberances of hill almost in contact with hill, lifting the traveller into mid air, sending down walls of rock tufted with scanty shrubs to a dark chasm below, and suspending objects in dreadful giddiness over an impetuous rush and a deafening roar of a wild stream careering in darkness below, as occur at the passes of Killiecrankie, Leney, Spittal of Glenshee, and Aberfoil?

Such is but a faint outline of what may be seen and enjoyed in this land of mountain and flood; and among scenes like these have we been wandering for the last fourteen days, that we may be able to give a true and particular account of the grouse-shooter's prospects for the approaching season on the Grampians for old 1849; and during that period we have penetrated many a mountain glen, deep corrie, and boundless moor. On the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th we hunted a large portion of moors at the head of Strath-earn, and found what birds had been left from last year's shooting, and the destructive disease that played such havoc among the grouse family for these past two seasons; we say, what birds were left have bred well, and over all this district of country, where anything like a stock of old birds were left from last season, good fair shooting may be expected, and the broods seem all to be in a fine healthy state. On the 13th inst. we left the far west, "the land we love best," and on the evening of that day we took up our abode for the night at a pretty shooting-box situated at the base of the far-famed Birnam Hill,

Here we remained till the evening of the 15th,