At Salisbury, ridden by Alfred Day, she won the City Members' Plate of 50 sovs., added to a Sweepstakes of 5 sovs. each (6 subs.), one mile and a half, beating Major Pitt's Clarendon (2), Mr. Gannon's Hippona (3), Mr. King's Aristotle (4), and Mr. Jones's Sultana. 3 to 1 on Cymba, who won by a neck. At the same meeting, ridden by Alfred Day, she ran second to Mr. Pryse's Buscot Buck for the County Members' Plate, one mile and a half; Major Pitt's Clarendon and Mr. Dixon's Lady Bangtail also started. 2 to 1 on Cymba, who was beaten easily by three lengths. SUMMARY OF CYMBA'S PERFORMANCES. In 1848 she has started five times, and won three times : The Oaks Stakes at Epsom, value clear - £4200 70 £4373 Cymba is not in the Leger, and indeed has no engagement to run off of any importance. As usual, we have a curious coincidence or two in reference to the late Epsom Meeting. "Firstly," then, this is the third year in which John Day has been successful for one, if not both, of the great events: in 1846, he won Derby and Oaks, with Pyrrhus the First and Mendicant, 1847, the Derby with Cossack, and now the Oaks with Cymba. It is also the third year in which the jockey who piloted the Derby winner has also been first home for the Oaks. Sam Day on Pyrrhus and Mendicant, and Sim Templeman on Cossack and Miami, Surplice and Cymba; the last a repetition altogether unprecedented. Mr. Herring having resigned the office of painter-in-chief to and of the high-mettled racer, Mr. Harry Hall has been gazetted as his successor, and we can only say, from the portraits he has lately sent us, that we entirely agree in the justice of the appointment. LAYS OF THE DEER FOREST. This work should properly have been noticed in our review paper of last month; we are free, however, to confess that nothing has puzzled or fretted us so much for some time as the so-called "Lays of the Deer Forest." We were actually afraid to pronounce upon them, and the more we tried to test one volume by the other, the oftener we flew from text to notes, the more perplexed and undecided did we become. One volume, despite Sydney Smith's assertion as to the prejudice it is likely to give, we tried again and again, as all honest reviewers should, to read-in vain. The other we have hung over with as much keen enjoyment, and referred to as frequently, as ever did * By John Sobieski and Charles Edward Stuart. Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. Master Tommy to Robinson Crusoe, or his elder sister to the smuggled copy of Don Juan. The "Lays of the Deer Forest" are put together in as thorough defiance of all the arts of "book-making" as any work we ever had the fortune to come across. There are, we have already intimated' two volumes: one occupied with an imposing rivulet of good-sized type put into high-sounding rhythm; the other a headless, tailless affair of unpresuming notes, marshalled, of course, into a much less attractive fashion of print: and now, to climax the extraordinary character of the work, we will go on to say that everybody will read the volume of notes, and nobody will read the volume of poems. It is, in fact, a fine fantastically carved figure-head thrown away, if not actually disfiguring, a really rakish business-like craft that would clear her way much better under her own colours. It is not by any means a true figure-head either; though, like the sign-painter who drew a Red Lion and called it the Black Horse, it may suit a purpose to say so. The "Lays of the Deer Forest" are not lays of the deer forest. "Cain," "O'Connell's Requiem," "The Death Ship," and a hundred or so other little pieces of fifty or sixty lines each, may have been written in (as we see by their dates they nearly all were), but nevertheless they are not of, the deer forest. All are marked more or less by a religious and very national feeling, but breathe no more the spirit of the stalker, or the engrossing passion of the hill-man, than did Falstaff when he babbled of green fields, or the cockney tenor who nightly chorusses his curious choice of " my native ills for me!" Save and except in "The Templar's Tomb," the grand effort of the volume, we believe it would be quite impossible to find a couple of couplets together having anything like reference to sport. The tale of the tomb, however, begins well, that is as far as the aim goes, the hero being introduced as just returning from a day's sport, though certainly in as curious a costume for "chasing the wild deer and chevying the roe," as one could well imagine : "For gilded spurs on heel he wore, And of his baldrick every bore, And every buckle that jingled bright Was worked and wrought with golden light." What with his white paletot, his glitter and jingle, such a gentleman no doubt would make a hit at Drury Lane, though we very much question his doing as much on Ben-y-ghloe. Still, for the purpose required, such accoutrements may serve well enough, as sport is the last thing he is intended for-save it be in connexion with some most extraordinary hobgoblins and imps, who lead poor Blanch-mantel a devil of a life of it for some time, and eventually run him to ground at the tomb, over which his story seems to have been started. In the "Lady of the Lake," Sir Walter Scott thought and wrote with the heart and dash of the sportsman. Every simile, every term bearing upon the subject came well home to it. You felt, as he must have felt, the innate sympathy for sport, to sing of it with so much effect. In the "Lays of the Deer Forest" there is none of this. You may picture from them two strolling contemplative gentlemen, with a strong development of the amor patriæ, and a most romantic attachment to old times, piping forth somewhat melancholy music on the themes which chiefly occupy their thoughts. In every line you may see the Scotchman: in very few could you recognize the sportsman. And so amen to the "Lays," with their "fatal facility" of metre and conventional style of expression: "put them on the shelf," as Blackwood so sagely advises, and turn for a while to the second or volume of notes. Do not, however, let it be for a moment supposed that we passed the first without reference or thought of its fellow. Had we not found by their prose writings the real worth and stuff in the brothers Stuart, we should never have thought of saying so much as to their poetry. The strange contrast between the two volumes has, however, forced us to be thus lengthy in our negative notice of the first, if it were only to point our appreciation of the second. Here, freed from all the trammels and forms of versification, the Messieurs Stuart speak and write up to their text with singular ability and effect. Armed with all the experience of hill-men, and backed with the fine taste of educated gentlemen, their work cannot fail to enchant all who once open upon its unattractive-looking form of page and print. To us it appears the most perfect treatise imperfectly put together that was perhaps ever published. Would that someone, with an eye to the common rules of book-writing and reading, had just put up each division of the subject into separate chapters, and so carried on the unequalled matter it contains with something like an opening and an ending. Re-writing it wants not. Detail of incident or description of scenery were never given in purer or more forcible language than they are here. The style is at once elegant and workmanlike; and while the sportsman-the deer-stalker-is never for a moment off his line, there is at the same time an under current of more romantic feeling that associates very happily, if indeed it be not inseparable from the scene of his operations. To illustrate in some measure the charm of this, we will select the following from the very many passages we have marked as favourable for extract: “The does (roe) bring forth their kids in April or May, and they produce almost invariably two, generally a male and a female. These twins, reared and nourished together, acquire so strong an affection that they never quit each other during their lives, and when they leave their family, go to establish another in some new haunt. In the bedding season the does retire into the most secret thickets, or other lonely places, to produce their young, and cover them so carefully that they are very rarely found; we have, however, deceived their vigilance. There was a solitary doe which lived in the hollow below the Bràigh-cloiche-léithe in Tarnaway. I suppose that we had killed her marrow,' but I was careful not to disturb her haunt, for she was very fat and round, stepped with much caution, and never went far to feed. Accordingly, when at evening and morning she came out to pick the sweet herbs at the foot of the brae, or by the little green well in its face, I trode softly out of her sight, and if I passed at noon, made a circuit from the black willows, or thick junipers, where she reposed during the heat. At last, one fine sunny morning I saw her come tripping out from her bower of young birches as light as a fairy, and very gay and 'canty'-but so thin, nobody but an old acquaintance could have known her. For various mornings afterwards I saw her on the bank, but she was always restless and anxiouslistening and searching the wind-trotting up and down-picking a leaf here and a leaf there, and after her short and unsettled meal she would take a frisk round leap into the air, dart down into her secret bower, and appear no more until the twilight. In a few days, however, her excursions became a little more extended, generally to the terrace above the bank, but never out of sight of the thicket below. At length she ventured to a greater distance, and one day I stole down the brae among the birches. In the middle of the thicket there was a group of young trees growing out of a carpet of deep moss, which yielded like a down pillow. The prints of the doe's slender forked feet were thickly tracked about the hollow, and in the centre there was a bed of the velvet fog,' which seemed a little higher than the rest, but so natural that it would not have been noticed by any unaccustomed eye. I carefully lifted the green cushion, and under its veil, rolled close together, the head of each resting on the flank of the other, nestled two beautiful little kids, their large velvet ears laid smooth on their dappled necks, their spotted sides sleek and shining as satin, and their little delicate legs as slender as hazle wands, shod with tiny glossy shoes as smooth and black as ebony, while their large dark eyes looked at me out of the corners with a full, mild, quiet gaze, which had not yet learned to fear the hand of man: still they had a nameless doubt which followed every motion of mine-their little limbs shrunk from my touch, and their velvet fur rose and fell quickly; but as I was about to replace the moss, one turned its head, lifted its sleek ears towards me, and licked my hand as I laid their soft mantle over them. I often saw them afterwards when they grew strong, and came abroad upon the brae, and frequently I called off old Dreadnought when he crossed their warm track. Upon these occasions he would stand and look at me with wonder, turn his head from side to side, snuff the ground again, to see if it was possible that he could be mistaken, and when he found that there was no disputing the scent, cock one ear at me with a keener inquiry, and seeing that I was in earnest, trot heavily onward with a sigh." It would be almost impossible to imagine a more beautiful little picture of still life, or one sketched with better taste and feeling, than that embodied in the incident we have quoted. To match it, let us now take another from the more stirring part of the work, and portray in the person of the Stuart "the deer-stalker returning." He is about crossing the Findhorn, with a buck and a brace of guns slung to his back : "As I descended through the Boat-Shaw, I heard a heavy sound from the water; but when I came out from the birches upon the green bank on its brink, I saw that the river had come down, and was just lipping with the top of the stone, the sight of whose head was the mark for the last possibility of crossing. As I looked upon its contracting ring, I perceived that the stream was still growing; there was no time to be lost, for the alternative now was to go round by the bridge of Daltulich, a circuit of four miles; and I knew that before I reached the next good ford the water would be a continuous rapid, probably six feet deep: I decided, therefore, upon trying the chance where I was. Dreadnought, who had gone about thirty yards up the stream to take the deep water in the pool of Craig-Darach, had observed my hesitation with one leg out and one in the water, and was standing on the point of the rock waiting the result. As soon as I made another step he plunged into the river, and in a few moments was rolling on the bank of silver sand, thrown up by the back-water upon the opposite side of the river. As I advanced through the stream, he looked at me occasionally, and I at him, and the beautiful smooth sand and green bank upon his side-for by that time I began to wish I was there too. I was then in pretty deep water for a ford, but still some distance from the deepest part; my kilt was floating round me in the boiling water, and the strong eddy, formed by the stream running against my legs, gulped and gushed with increasing weight. I moved slowly and carefully, for the whole ford was filled with large round slippery stones from the size of a sixty-pound shot to a two-hundred-weight shell. I stopped to rest, and looked back to the ford mark: it was wholly gone, and I saw only the broad smooth wave of water which slipped over its head. Ten paces more and I should be through the deepest part. I stepped steadily and rigidly, but I wanted the use of my balancing limbs, and the freedom of my breath; for the barrels of the double gun and rifle, which were slung at my back, were passed under my arms to keep them out of the water; and I was also obliged to hold the legs of the buck, which, loaded with the wood-cat,' were crossed upon my breast. At every step the round and slidering stones endangered my footing, rendered still more unsteady by the upward pressure of the water. In this struggle the current gave a great gulp, and a wave plashed up over my guns. I staggered downwards with the stream, and could not recover a sure footing for several yards. At last I secured my hold against a large fixed stone, and paused to rest. After a little I made another effort to proceed. The water was now running above my belt, and at the first step which I made from the stone I found that it deepened abruptly before me. I felt that six inches more, that strong stream would lift me off my legs; and with great difficulty I gained about two yards up the current to ascertain if the depth was continuous, but the bottom still shelved before me, and as I persisted in attempting it, I was turned round by the stream; the waves were leaping through the deep channel before me, and having no arms to balance my steps I began to think of the bonnie banks on either side the river. In this jeopardy poor Dreadnought had not been unconcerned; at the first moment of my struggle he had gone down the great stony beach which lay before me, and, sitting down by the water, watched me with great anxiety, and at last began to whine and whimper and tremble with agitation. But when he saw me stagger down the stream he rose, went in up to his knees, howled, pawed the water, and lapped the waves with impatience. Meanwhile I was obliged to come to a rest, with my left foot planted strongly against a stone, for the mere resistance to the pressure of water, which, rushing with a white foam from my side, was sufficient exertion without the weight of the buck and the two guns, which amounted to more than seventy pounds. After a few moments' pause I made a last effort to reach the east bank, but it was now impossible, and I turned to make an attempt to regain the Tarnaway side. I was at least thirty yards lower down than when I entered the stream, and the water was rushing and foaming all round me; another stagger nearly carried me off my feet, and in the exertion to keep them, a thick transpiration rose upon my forehead, my ears began to sing, and my head to swim, while, disordered in their balance, the buck and the guns almost strangled me. I looked down the channel; the water was running in a white broken rapid into the black pool below, and swept with a wide foaming back-water under the steep rock which turned its force. The soft green bank before me was sleeping beneath the shade of the weeping birches, where bluebells and primroses grew thick in the short smooth turf, and though they had long shed their blossoms, the bright patches of their clusters were yet visible among the tall foxgloves, which still retained the purple bells upon their tops. The bank looked softer and greener, and more inviting than ever it had done before; but my eyes grew dim, and my limbs faint with that last struggle. I felt for my dirk knife, for a desperate rolling swim for life seemed now inevitable, and, steadying myself in the stream, I cut loose the straps of the buck and the slings of the guns, and retaining them only with my hands, held them ready to let go as soon as I should be taken off my legs. When they were free I dipped my hand in the water, and laved it over my brow and face. The singing of my ears ceased, and my sight came clear, and I discovered that I had lost my |