that Mr. Robert

has selected the

Dragoon Guards as the medium of his introduction to the army. Of course, on your account he commands my best offices. I am aware of his musical talents, and shall speak favourably of them to the master of our band; but let me know, in confidence, whether his inclination leans towards the kettle-drums, or the cymbals. I strongly recommend the latter, as I think a turban would decidedly become him."

Circumstances brought to a somewhat abrupt termination our three years' intimacy, but still I had occasional intimations of his career. He took a degree at Cambridge, where a certain set patronised him when he gave a dinner, and, in the spirit of an honourable ambition, began to look about for some profession or office that should give him social position. On this generous pursuit he entered with enthusiasm, an unblemished character, the aid of friends, and ample resources. A distinguished lawyer was consulted as to the propriety of his entering the Temple. He was a wag, and spake thus :-"It is my opinion there exists no precedent for such a step: I never saw a gentleman of colour called to the bar, except at the Old Bailey; a black face under a white wig would look like a mourning-coach in a snow-storm." His hopes in theology fared no better. People were not so straight-laced a dozen years ago as they are now, but, since the Reformation, could a congregation have been found to stand a parson with a face like a piece of his cassock, immersing, in the snowy folds of a cambric kerchief, a snout the colour of an undertaker's truncheon? In diplomacy it was the same. Your attaché, it is true, has little to do, but he is expected to take out her excellency's poodles to air, and that was forbidden to one who might have said with Lear, "Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart, bark at me." . . . Need I point to the moral of my chapter, or pause to assign a reason for turning aside from the highway of my narrative to record episodes such as these? In the sorrows of mortality we have our best assurances of another and a better life :"Then shall man's pride and dulness comprehend

His action's, passion's, being's use and end!"

ROYAL PHEASANT SHOOTING IN SWINLEY PARK.

THE Plate to which this notice refers, represents His Royal Highness Prince Albert engaged in the sport of pheasant shooting, in Swinley Park. We have reason to believe that it has been correctly treated, as Mr. Davis made himself acquainted with the Prince's habit of taking the field, previous to painting for this work the picture from which the engraving was made. The armed figures represent two German keepers"jagers," attendants on these occasions; and the greyhound (another unusual party in such a scene), being a present from Her Majesty, is so especial à favourite that it is rarely absent from His Royal Highness's side. The other details call for no explanation, as they are those common to the pursuit of a well-known English field sport.

249

THE SPORTS AND RECREATIONS OF THE PEOPLE, AND THEIR MORAL EFFECTS.*

BY THE HON. GRANTLEY F. BERKELEY, M.P.

THIS is a topic on which there has been more false reasoning foisted on the world by the spiritual quacks of the day, as well as by the temporal and amateur cleansers of the spirit, than on any other. Tracts, essays, and preachings, have been poured out upon the unoffending populace to such an extent, that the gratings of literary drainage have been clogged up, to the detention of more useful matter. Feverish ministers, thirsty for a fault, have denounced many of the most ancient sports of the people as derogatory to the human understanding, and demoralizing in the last degree. Ladies and gentlemen, who have dubbed themselves village demagogues, and become cunning in the whipping of young peasants, till every wall and shed are stained with words their labours have brought to light, have been loud against different recreations, till, at last, the muscular and active villager has found himself left, in his idle hour, without any amusement at all. He must not attend the fight of the game cock, or dog; he must not play for a broken head, wrestle a fall, or indulge in the honest buffet of a boxing match; for, if he does, the charitable world will pronounce him cruel, or a brawler, and deem him all unworthy of those boons which his betters may, at certain times and seasons, have it in their power to bestow. The harmless recreation of bat and ball is now denied on Sunday, as if innocent enjoyment, after divine service, were a sin in the face of Heaven, when, between the hours of worship, the peasant is absolutely driven to the ale bench, to while away that time which, but for the sickly misgivings of an ascetic soul, might be so much more healthfully employed.

There cannot be a doubt, indeed many of our best judges on the bench have leaned to the opinion, that since the boxing-match has been discountenanced and put down; since the fair, upstanding, and manly fight has been thrown into disrepute, precisely in the same degree has the un-English stab with the knife come into play.

For myself, I have never hesitated to declare my attachment to all sports wherein the courage of man, or of beast, or bird, is fully developed; the combat, with a fair field, and no favour, I delight to see, a surrender being at all times at the option of either party.

The boxing-match, the backsword, the foil, the single stick, and wrestle for the fall, have all their charms in my eyes; the baiting of animals alone is a recreation in which there should be no pleasure, and which I regard as cruel, for the reason that the creature tied to a stake has no option of surrender, and no desire to maintain the fight. In my opinion, the display of gallantry, whether of man or beast, has a tendency to gain respect for courage in the eyes of the bystanders, and that it has no demoralizing effect whatever. There is scarce any amusement, in which the nature of animals is necessary to the pleasure

• The reader will receive the opinions contained in this paper as those of a valued correspondent, but not as sentiments to which the Editor wholly subscribes.—ED.

of man, that may not, on its surface, bear a charge of cruelty; but when men sit down to review these things, and their general effects, their minds should cling to no isolated fact, but they should embrace the whole subject, as one would look upon a steam-vessel, in whose graceful progress through the water, and external symmetry, all the contortions and crooked throes of the machinery within were forgotten.

In conversing with a learned judge on these matters, when boxing and stabbing with the knife were under consideration, I remember being told that his Lordship did not object to the settlement of a quarrel by the fist, but he highly condemned the prize-fight. Now, I have no hesitation in maintaining that the one is the parent of the other; and that, in the absence of the prize-fight, and the rules inculcated by it, the boxing out of a quarrel would dwindle into a mere brutal struggle.

In the prize-ring, the fairest and most manly rules are scrupulously observed, and upon these the settlement of a village quarrel is based and founded. The prize-fight is in open day, and may be looked upon by all the world. Emulation, more or less grafted in the breast of every one, leads the bystander to imitate the science and gallantry displayed before him, to take no unfair advantage, to feel no deadly hatred to his noble foe, but to regard his opponent as one with whom, the moment the contest is over, he may again be on the most honourable and friendly terms. The countryman or townsman sees two undaunted men, in the face of hundreds of people, step boldly into the ring, with the weapons nature gave them, bearing no malice, and determined to take no unfair advantage; they shake hands previous to the fight, and throw themselves on their guard with a smile of defiance. Behind them stand their seconds, to see fair play, and to resign for the vanquished, if his stubborn spirit would prompt him to continue the contest, when all chance of success had left him. The fact of who is the better man, being settled, the combatants shake hands and are better friends than ever.

Now to prove that the prize-fight has power, to a great extent, over the casual boxing-match, and that the rules and regulations of the one, come, at last, to be the governing principle of the other, we have only to observe the usual way in which country quarrels of this description are brought to a termination. If two countrymen fall out, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, they, of themselves, turn their disagreement into a combat for money, and, having quarrelled. one of them instantly puts down whatever sum he can command, and dares the other to cover it. A ring is formed, they choose their seconds, the bystanders will not permit a foul blow; and the whole affair is conducted precisely according to the rules which the prizering has laid before them.

In these contests, and in the prize-ring, men are sometimes killed; but so did they use to be in tournaments of old, when, to discountenance all idea of personal hostility, those meetings were styled, the "gentle passages of arms."

Looking at a mere prize-fight got up by the backers or friends of each party, it seems, in its abstract position, to be a useless brutality for two men, having no cause of quarrel, to bruise each other for the possession of gold; but, regarding it in another light, as the necessary display of a fair standard, by the rights and regulations of which,