object of his being; within the present century, so to do was the especial office of the squirearchy: the field is now the resort of those who desire a manly and invigorating exercise. Hunting is a leisure enjoyment, and not a laborious calling. Men may be sportsmen, and useful and accomplished members of society besides. The noble science is no doubt full of excellent and interesting knowledge; the mystery of scent and animal instinct is, nobody can gainsay it, a goodly study. But one may enjoy a book without having taken the degree of Master of Arts. There may be a good deal of wholesome happiness found in forty minutes' good pace and fair riding on the line of a pack of fox-hounds, a Bœatian ignorance of the art and arcana of woodcraft to the contrary notwithstanding. Byron objects against the poetaster in Don Juan, that, "He praised the present, and abused the past." The latter, however, is by no means a necessary corollary of the former. Constituted as the social system was at the period, fox-hunting, in its relation to the condition of rural life generally, was not, perhaps, per se bad; but as a recreative resource it certainly is better than it used to be. Thus progress, both in a moral and a material sense, is the characteristic of time and the hour." Is there a limit to this priceless prerogative? Is there an ordinance of Providence-" Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther?" If it be not so, then indeed it hath not entered into the mind of man to conceive what the future has in store for the human race. The course of the year upon which we have entered will be marked by one of the most memorable movements in the history of our national career. The arrangements for that great congress of civilization, which in 1851 is to show the chef d'œuvres of science, skill, and industry from all the corners of the earth, and concentrate them in the metropolis of the world's commerce, will develop the materials of the capital of mind that has so long been scattered without clue to its amount. For the first time intelligence shall make personal acquaintance with all the members of its family. For the first time knowledge shall empty its cornucopia upon one spot. For the first time the nations of the earth shall gather together for an encounter of peace for a contest wherein the combatants will strive for pre-eminence in benefiting mankind. Perhaps allusion to this great fact may seem foreign to the purpose of these pagos; perhaps the reason assigned for such a deviation from the ordinary routine of their subjects may be obnoxious to still graver question. But it is at least done in a good spirit: the offence will come prefaced by the favour of honest intention. One of the keenest essayists of our day, in a recent article published in a popular periodical, thus addresses Louis Napoleon : "MONS. LE PRESIDENT,-I have to acknowledge an act of enlightened courtesy on your part towards my illustrious fellow-countryman, Mr. Robert Stephenson, engineer, who,' says your Moniteur, has been named a Knight of the Order of the Legion of Honour.' Besides the courtesy, there is a delicate touch of satire in the act, though I fear too delicate to be felt by the ruling powers of perfidious Albion. We don't honour literature, science, or anything of that sort. We now and then acknowledge the existence of prodigious talent, when we happen to want it.......A few days ago we paid off a couple of ships' crews returned from the North Pole, making no more account of the gallant hardihood, the indomitable courage of the noble fellows-of courage exercised in the holist cause-than if they had been so many stokers of the Daisy and the Moonlight, plying between London-bridge and Gravesend. I can imagine other treatment for such heroes in France. Why, sir, they would have received a national acknowledgment: they would have been banquetted at the Hôtel de Ville or at the Invalides. All France, in the person of the Minister of Marine, would have thanked the tars, sending them home with their hearts throbbing with a new love towards their country. We do nothing of the sort. No; we modate'-so say the newspapers the brave fellows at the pay-table.' We throw down their wages, and there an end. We discharge them as we would discharge a waterman who takes us from Battersea to Westminster.....And is this fault only the error of our government? Certainly not. Our journalists are tainted to rankness with it. They want mutual respect, mutual advocacy of the dignity of their calling. accom .. Feeling and lamenting this miserable want of public recognition of the claims of genius-lamenting that those whose proper function it is to teach and vindicate the dignity of intellect are too prone to ignore its noblest dues-I learned with the greatest satisfaction that, with a delicacy honourable to yourself and a satiric of us, you have distinguished that great man, that wonderful conqueror of the impossible, Robert Stephenson. M. le President, allow me sin . cerely to thank you, even for the Legion of Honour." Arrangements are in progress, at the instance and with the especial countenance of the Prince Consort of the Queen of these realms, for a public exhibition of the produce and manufacture of all the countries of the world in the British capital. Is it the intention of the the royal institutor to limit this mighty jubilee of genius to productions of a material character only? Must the composition offered for public observation with a view to public recompense and reward be not only the work of a man's head, but of his hand also? Are the doors to be closed against the artificer in letters, that ungracious travail upon whose labourers the English language has not condescended to bestow even a name? Is there to be neither grace no gain for "the poor scholar"? Prince! winner of such a prodigal store of golden opinions, pass not this occasion for adding yet another jewel to the gracious stock, "We don't honour literature," is the declaration of one well suited to arrive at a just conclusion upon such a proposition. Set us, then, the fair and grateful example. Commerce, trade, agriculture-all the economy of rural, social, and domestic life-art and science, as applied to the operations of the working-day world-command the royal patronage, which is "a tower of strength." Deign some demonstration of a claim to regard, some token of consideration, for the profession of letters. The method or the measure I do not presume to dictate: I petition for the abstract boon-may I say merely for the simple act of equity and right? It will not, surely, be said that the consequences of knowledge are unfit associates for its causes. pioneers of the men who wrought. to pure, as to mixed mathematics. The men who wrote were the moral worked its hypotheses was the beacon which lighted Labour to its haven. Did toil or trouble lack succour or refreshment, biography had its panacea of successful cases, and story its tale of " moving accidents" to supply a specific. Letters, which were both the parents and the nurses of the infant arts, should be permitted to share their triumph. The pen that cleared the wilderness of ignorance, and substituted "figs for thistles," is the most slighted of all the implements of men's skill and cunning. "We don't honour literature." It is soothly said, and "there's the rub." George the Fourth made Walter Scott a baronet ;intellect has done the state as good service as did the Waverley Novels, without the Abbotsford case being followed as a precedent. Art is but the application of knowledge "The wing wherewith we fly to Heaven;" and learning is the child of letters. Shall mind in the middle of the nineteenth century ask in vain to be placed on a footing with the furnace and the loom? Let the new year give to such a question an emphaticNo! The existing agitation-I will not say distress-among the proprie tors and cultivators of the land must have a sinister effect upon the rural spirit generally; and yet the country—at least the social aspect of it-betrays no signs of any decline in the national taste for field sports. To come to this conclusion I do not take into account the epidemic which rages for racing and steeple-chasing. I should as soon pronounce the hectic of fever on the cheek an evidence of a robust health. What I do mean is, that the popular characteristic is as strongly marked, if not more so, than ever. We will take cricket, for example. Last summer that fine manly game might be seen in all its various phases, from the "pride, pomp, and circumstance" of the princely park to the humble circle of the village green, stirring the hearts and limbs alike of peers and peasants. I happened to pass Audley End, one afternoon, when the cricket match patronized by Lord Braybroke was in all its best rustic array and the friendly contest at its climax, and a more picturesque and animating sight cannot be conceived. Who says Old England is the pandemonium of the blue devils ?-where, as Pope tells us, we may see"The judge, to dance, his brother sergeants call, The senator at cricket urge the balls." Amen. So be it ever. The bat is not yet a betting agent; odds on stumps and wickets are not yet quoted at Tattersall's. The club system is almost universally applied to cricket. Members play together, with professional additions occasionally, or they play against other clubs: miscellaneous matches are not much countenanced. There is no risk of encounter ing a discreditable person; there is no hazard of being associated with a dangerous companion at the rendezvous of any company of respectable men elected into one of these societies. I hail as one of the healthiest signs of our time the extension of the principle of clubs to the social intercourse of life generally. There is excellent philosophy, and a valuable moral to boot, in the old saw, "tell me who you go with, and I'll tell you who you are." When the system of elective association is adopted on the turf-as adopted it surely will be at no distant day-racing will be purified, if not absolutely purged, of the offence which now wins for it a measure of popular odium that ought by no means to attach to a great national sport. I think the chase might be a little more exclusive, with advantage to itself. Money is certainly no criterion of character; nevertheless there is a sort of conventional respectability attaching to those who "pay their way." For this reason it would be convenient to bring about an understanding, that it was expected no one in the condition of a gentlemen would make a practice of hunting with packs of hounds supported by subscription without contributing to their funds. It is good to be liberal no doubt, but I cannot see the service of establishing the precedent that the paying members of hunting clubs, and the non-paying strangers who may think fit to place themselves on the free list, should meet in the field upon the same footing. HANDS, NOT HEARTS. BY FOXGLove. "Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to choose a man? Give me the spirit, Master Shallow." Be not disappointed, fair readers, if indeed ye ever condescend to gratify your maternal failing by peeping between the pages of "that odious Sporting Magazine, that is always littering about on the writingtable;" be not disappointed when on reading this title you find instead of a gentle love tale, such as you delight to con, that those "eternal horses are again on the tapis," and that, as usual, the orange-blossom must yield precedence to the blooming evergreen, the plant that proverbially will only cease to flower when your sweet influence ceases to control mankind. Fain would I pen a love tale for your edification; but when the head is silvered, and the form rotund, when the carmine that adorned our youthful cheeks has settled permanently in the nose, when we acknowledge to middle age, and are voted by mere boys to be insufferable old bores, it better becomes us to prose over the mahogany than to whisper nonsense on an ottoman; and leaving the young ones to be happy in their own way, we grapple some congenial old boy by the button, and hold on to him till he has received the full benefit of our experience and observation. "Hands, not hearts," is the shortest sentence I can think of to describe what we so often see in the hunting-field. Why is it that there are scores of men like "young Harry with his beaver up," expressly formed "to turn or wind a fiery Pegasus, and witch the world with noble horsemanship," having good seats, fine hands, capital horses, and plenty of them, with all the means and appliances to "make the mare to go;" and yet if they were turned out by themselves with a pack of fox-hounds and a moderately holding scent, would infallibly lose them in the first two miles? Nay, with all the advantage of others to show them the way, and the assistance of the very excellent macadamised roads which this favoured country can boast, it is as much as they can do to muddle through a run somehow, coming up some ten minutes after a good fox has been killed, delighted with the whole thing, and of course making the run exactly their ten minutes longer than the reality. It must be want of "heart"-mind, I do not mean courage; far be it from me to impugn the valour of nine out of every ten men who wear the garb of the chase; many of them would (indeed many of them have) as unhesitatingly charge a battery as a bull-finch, or ride as gallantly up to a horse of ruthless Sikhs as they would to a flight of stout oaken rails of the sort that may be termed undeniable; but this is not it. Having got over the obstacles between them and the hounds, having jumped this stile or plumbed that ditch, they do not know what to do or where to go, and whilst they are making three fields the hounds have made four-a progressive ratio which ere long places them where the little boat was, a long way a-stern." Example is better than precept, and I can perhaps give a clearer idea of my meaning by describing two men of my acquaintance, both passionately fond of hunting, but with one exception as widely different as it is possible to be, and exemplifying in their style of getting over a country the two extremes of hands and hearts. A pack of hounds are drawing a gorse in a flying country. The whole thing is a picture: large fields, large fences, a great proportion of grass, and not another covert for miles. Out of that large assemblage of sportsmen, look at the man riding the clever dark chestnut with one white leg. Say, is he not the very pattern of a workman? From his faultless coat, his irreproachable leathers, his praiseworthy boots, down to the very rowels of his spurs, everything is exactly what should be worn by a first-rate horseman and hard rider, who is at the same time a perfect gentleman and a man of good taste. So much for the rider ; now look at his horse. Blood, bone, and beauty, with the tackle from the large easy yet powerful double-bridle, to the wide stirrup-irons, in which you cannot suggest an improvement. If with no other data to start from than what you now see, you were required to name one against the field, your nomination would be Sir Charles Carter versus all England. See him walk his horse up to that half-gap half-fence, that with two ditches separates him from the field where the master of the hounds is. How he handles his instruments! The chestnut horse puts his hind feet exactly on the solitary spot of sound ground, and with his second spring clears the further ditch, and lights upon his hind legs in the next field. Sir Charles's elastic seat is undisturbed, and his hands well down give you an idea of what sportsmen call "give and take." But here comes the cheeriest yeoman in England, honest John Downright, or Farmer Downright, as he is generally called. He, too, splutters over the same place to have a word with Sir Charles, who, by the way, is uncommonly popular amongst the farmers; but what a different system of equitation is adopted by the jolly yeoman! He rides with a snafflebridle, and with reins and whip in one hand, lays hold of the brown mare with a grasp of iron. He wears mahogany tops, and somewhat punishing spurs he calls them "toasting-forks "-drabs, and a green coat, with a rosy face that does your heart good on a hunting-morning, surmounting a well-filled frame of some fourteen stone or thereabouts, of |