vigil of various people upon a number of little ones, and, consequently, adds greatly to the numerical strength of congregations for prayer. This is an obvious fact; facts are sturdy things, and not to be upset by all the false doctrines in the world. Surface preaching, as well as surface legislation, are alike rife in the days in which we live; neither the house of parliament, nor the pulpit, is free from this gaudy vice, or cuckoo-catching clap-trap; and I fairly charge the whole host of saintly sinners, every man of them on whomsoever the cap may fit, "who have become wicked in behalf of righteousness, and cruel out of piety," with a direct breach of the beneficent intentions of the great Author of religion, and with virtual contempt of His holy providence. I repeat-" that a religion which inspires hatred and outrage to all the rest of the world, and which condemns, wholesale, every soul (and their name is Legion) who travels on a Sunday by railway, through which, to seek the smiling face of the country, and the sweet fresh air given under heaven, as the common right of every living creature; also, in addition, refusing to each who share in the sports of the field, the feelings of charity;-why then I declare, in my humble, but openly expressed opinion, that the rules which govern the minds of these surface preachers, can never be those simply and religiously taken from the law of the merciful and impartial Maker and Judge of mankind. Many of the assertions of Dr. Styles, in that strange production of his, entitled a "prize essay," scarcely more remarkable for the ignorance which it manifested of natural history, than for the uncharitable opinions it contained towards his neighbours, and for which he received the disproportionate reward of £100 from the "cruel society" in London, to the exclusion of a more unpretending, but far superior, work by Mr. Youatt, are part and parcel of the pharisaical and puritanical doctrines upheld by the Agnewites of the northern hemisphere. If this presbyterian sore be permitted thus to break out in fresh places, and to progress over the hitherto healthy parts of our constitution, uncurtailed by the wholesome application of caustic, by the hand of the observant layman, why all that is either fair or beautiful will be corroded and eaten into by ascetic diseases and "bitter observances," till the bland, the cheerful, and alluring smile of religion, is turned into a forbidding scowl, to scare the timid sinner from all hope of succour. Man, who, in my opinion, may seek the favour of heaven, as a child may fly to the breast of its mother, with glad reliance on its genial mercy, and a cheerful sense of the great sacrifice made on the cross for the purposes of salvation, will, by these wholesale dealers in dark colours, be driven to doubt whether the time and place of what he conceived to be the last atonement of the sinner, has not been wrongfully apportioned or apprehended; and that, instead of a punishment to come, the worst state of spiritual as well as bodily endurance is, at the present hour, around him. If the use of the steamcarriage, of the public oven, as well as the enjoyment of those minor sports of the field within the compass of the poorer classes, are to be condemned as subversive of religion, and rendered illegal; and grave preachers, with an appearance of sincerity, are to hold up lollipops as the wages of Satan, with which sweet condiments he wins to himself the * See pamphlet before alluded to. London Published December 1141 for the Proprietor of the Sporting Resin by I Mitchell 33 Old Bond Street souls of children, why do not the same serious gentlemen, with like or better reason, condemn, if not on week-days, certainly on Sundays, the merest use of fire, as an element exclusively dedicated to the devil. Natural history affords no other instance of the vital spark existing in such an atmosphere; while, at the same time, it is a known fact that, for the fuel to maintain our earthly fires, certain miners, in the Dean Forest, as well as in other districts, are obliged to work on Sunday, in order that the pit may be pumped sufficiently clear of water, to enable the great body of labourers to work their permitted portion of the week. But no-these murky finger-posts of thorny paths; these inventors of the worst roads to salvation; these dark lanterns of melancholy illumination, will not do this, or anything approaching to it; fire has a comfortable charm in this life for their limbs, however they may fear its application hereafter and when do we find one of these terrible denouncers of the vendors of pastry, or of the child's lollipop, or of the Sabbath day's innocent enjoyment by the poor (what with lollipops and salvation, I must declare these reverend gentlemen blend the ridiculous circumstance with the serious theme, most pitifully together), who, in the privacy of his own apartment, will deny himself the creature comforts of the world? If, in some instances, intentional privations actually exist, the fact, in all probability, arises from the morbid disease of a spirit, unnecessarily desponding, from sordid habits pressed into the semblance of religious service, or from the power of some mental spectre, which has been unhappily seated on the brain by organic disarrangement. I repeat, "the bitter observance" of the sabbath, the doctrines to the maintenance of which, the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Animals prostitute their funds, are part and parcel of an unwholesome disease, which it becomes every Englishman to reduce. The rights and enjoyments of the poor are being infringed on every hour; they are turned into politicians for lack of other amusement; and, with but a local view of the national interest, they are often induced to press upon their representatives for the adoption of measures, which, like the preachings from the pharisaical and puritanical pulpits, are glossed over with a surface virtue, too weak and problematical to be of any permanent service, either in this world, or in the world to come. THE BURTON HUNT. THIS celebrated hunt originated about the year 1775, at which period the country was first hunted by the grandfather of the late Lord Monson. His son continued the establishment (for a short time in conjunction with Sir Thomas Clargess); old Evans, a sportsman highly esteemed in that day, being the huntsman. The pack descended from certain drafts obtained from the kennels of Lord Ludlow (who was the purchaser of Lord Perceval's hounds in 1760), and of the celebrated Hugo Meynell. About the year 1806, Lord Monson died, and, among other property, his son derived from him some forty couples of as good foxhounds as ever were bred. These were, shortly after, bought by George Osbaldeston, Esq., who subsequently hunted the Burton country. In 1814, Mr. Osbaldeston was succeeded by R. W. Walker, Esq., who took the country with a pack bought from Lord Foley, but he only kept them for two seasons, when they became the property of Sir Bellingham Graham. The country then fell into the hands of Thomas Assheton Smith-a name in itself a guarantee for the manner in which the business of the field was conducted. The present sporting master of the Burton followed Mr. Smith. In 1825, Sir Richard Sutton met with a serious accident, which, for two years, interrupted his exertions in the service of Lincolnshire fox-hunting. On resuming the office he now so efficiently fills, Sir Richard added to his own, Sir George Sitwell's pack (for which he gave 500 guineas), and at this day the Burton kennels contained strains of all the best blood in England. The present master of the Burton Hunt, Sir Richard Sutton, Bart., has now, with a short interval, been master of that establishment for twenty years, during the whole of which period, Shirley has been the huntsman. The whips are J. Wilson, W. Turpin, and J. Harrison. The kennels are at Burton, two miles N. W. of Lincoln. The following is the list of the fixtures, with their distances from Lincoln: Thonock House, two miles from Gainsborough, and Midge Inn, between Wragby and Horncastle, are omitted, in consequence of their lying out of the scale of the map. COURSING MEETINGS FOR THE PRESENT MONTH. Ridgway...................................................................................2 & 3 Osterley ...........2 & 4 Deptford Inn (Champion).........13, 14, 15, & 16 |