grapple." The latest entry is part of a review of Soyer's Pantropheon, extracted from his favourite Era :-

"We wish that we had space to quote in full our author's descriptions of the bold, the indolent, and the eclectic appetite. The first is the ploughman's possession, the result of exhaustion and fatigue; it is not squeamish about viands, and loses all reserve at sight of a very indifferent ragout. The second wants tickling forward; it is at first sluggish, but, touched by a succulent dish, it rouses, is astonished, its ardour becomes animated, and is capable of performing prodigies. The eclectic appetite owes nothing to nature, and is the child of art: happy, thrice happy the skilful cook to whom it it says, 'Thou art my father;' but how difficult is this creation! how rare! it is the work of genius!'

Mrs. Inman, from reasons which I have already adduced, thinks that her Indigo's is decidedly "the bold" appetite. His letter-book is still odder, and pasted therein is every letter he has received for twenty years. Among them I found one from my own foolish self, confidently assuring Indigo that his notion (which he got from some friend at the India Docks, of all places) that Cawrouch would win the Cesarewitch, was "utterly childish;" and another in which I treated with most peppery scorn his firm conviction that The Ban was out-and-out the best of Sir Joseph Hawley's St Leger lot. The gem of the bunch is, after all, a closely-written letter of four sides, from a little man who rejoices in the name of " Doleful Billy," announcing in the first line, that since Indigo saw him on the previous Saturday, he had become the wretched father of twins, and devoting the other 126 lines to upbraiding him with black ingratitude about picture frames. I have seen Indigo roar over that letter till the tears fairly trickled on to his trousers; and if any one could only see the stern upbraider, they would be equally held. His bookshelf is a great curiosity. It really contains some of the best works that ever issued from the brain-pans of Scott, Cooper, Thackeray, Dickens, and that noble army of novelists; but their backs are labelled Tacitus, Herodotus, Pliny, and so on. The Sporting Magazine is nothing more nor less than "Plato," and a little book of Transatlantic Rambles" has become "Epictetus." The consequence is, that not a soul among the farmers thinks of borrowing them, and therefore as a matter of course he never loses any of them.

It was this cute idea in embryo which caused me to receive a letter from him one fine morning, five years since, begging for a list of some twenty profane Latin and Greek authors by return of post. Oh, In. digo! what a queer creature you are! "Really getting queerer and queerer every day," as your good wife said to me, when you were rummaging in the cellar for that bottle of gooseberry, on the evening before the last Great Yorkshire Stakes.

But to appreciate. Indigo's character to the full, one ought to hear him fairly come away" with his tongue. with his tongue. There's no heading him. after that, I can assure you. I once saw him on a painting trip, and I shall never forget it. He pretended to work very hard all day, but it was all flam. Breakfast and a pipe occupied his time till eleven; then he took a full hour to get his palette ready, and the chesnut sorrel mare by Mundig (the best thing he ever painted, to my mind) and the cow looked up; and then having spent three more distinct intervals of ten minutes a-piece, with his pipe, he stopped at two o'clock. He can go about three times as fast as any man I ever saw grasp a brush-handle; but no earthly consideration will induce him to work after dinner when

he is away from home. When dinner was over that day, and he had polished off his beloved "fruity port," he wandered out into the miniature park, and by the very greatest persuasion, and the aid of three more pipes, he sketched some Alderneys, a church, and a mule to go into the background of his future picture. His gigantic labours were then ended for the day. After tea he lashed out for nearly four hours He began with his courting adventures, and described himself as a per fect Othello, in the matter of "hair-breadth escapes" from that wickea brother-in-law. Then followed an exposition of his views (and very remarkable indeed they are) for paying off the National Debt. Mr. Cobden and his Peace Society he fairly tore to rags, and scattered to the four winds of heaven. Then he made quite a ferocious run at the Bishops. "Make him Premier (he always jumps off with this expression), and would'nt he just tackle those lazy beggars! There was'nt a good one in the whole lot. He'd put them in training-he'd soon clip their pocket-money for them-let him come John Scott over them for a few months-they'd be a good deal better men than they are at the end of it-regular pot-hunters-he'd make them skip about their dioceses, and work a little of their pompous fat off my word, he would just, &c., &c.!" Then he was quite impressive upon an enlarged Parliamentary representation. "Why was'nt Indigo Inman to have a vote as well as Squire Humbug, Parson Pompous, and Sir John Turncoat? He knows a good deal more of politics than they do, and a deuced sight more honest, he should hope! He was so disgusted with the whole system, that he'd pack up his traps, and cross the Atlantic to Michigan, and turn bacon-dealer, and have a good universal suffrage-that was the place for an independent man-England quite rotten-never want to see it again, &c., &c. !" On farming he then became perfectly oracular. "He would'nt be a bacon-dealer-he'd take some land, and teach them how to farm-that he would!" Free Trade then came in for a turn, and for the last hour of the four he "worked " the Protectionists up hill and down dale till supper stopped his mouth. This is, or rather was, his great subject. The very farmers flew before him, as he strode down the village armed with League missiles. One of these unfortunate men once encountered him with a few arguments from the county paper, but with such ill-success that he ran out and hid himself in a calf-shed the next time he saw Indigo approach his dwelling, burning to complete the victory, and bristling all over like any porcupine with points from another of Cobden's speeches. Some of the neighbouring squires (Ironmould excepted) looked on him as a perfect infidel in political matters, and solemnly warned their tenants against having their Conservative tendencies uprooted by such a fellow. At the market ordinaries he is always wonderfully eloquent; in fact, he gets so carried away by his gift, that he over and over again misses the afternoon train, and has to return home bodily with his parcels in the covered carrier's cart. A brown frock-coat with a velvet collar, and a black hat with a very small brim, are his only extra adornments on these festal days. I have seen him descend from that cart with a most bland smile, and certain inflammatory symptoms about his eyes. He always argues that it is the action of the wind on those organs, and Mrs. Inman says: "Well! there is one comfort, you take pretty good care to keep the wind off your stomach. Of late he has quieted down on the subject

of politics, and has taken solely to the four sporting papers and the Sporting Magazine again. He likes dearly reading about races, but cares very little to go near them, although he pretends to have discovered a system of betting which would make him a very fine winner if he went. If he does go by chance, he is of my opinion, that it is well to see both; but if you have to decide between them, the start is far more worth seeing than the finish. At present he is quite determined upon becoming a British agriculturist. He has purchased a six-acre field and hired sixty acres more, and purposes to paint in the morning, work on the farm in the afternoon, and put the great farmers to shame by paying the best wages in the whole parish. Daubersden is the unique title of this remarkable estate. It was awfully out of condition when he signed the conveyance; but it has been pared and burnt, and a crop of wheat is just breaking ground. An acre and a half is to be railed off next year, and if Indigo is only a man of his word, he will build a house and lay out a garden thereon. The railroad runs near it, and a small sluggish stream, which flows under the railway, and joins the Brawl near Ironmould's paddock, circumvents it on two side. I look for many a delicious baked pike out of that stream; and I only hope that the monsters I saw swimming there this summer may not serve any member of the Inman family as one of them (a country paper swore to it) served a servant girl who went to fetch a pail of water, viz., " bit off her finger, and barked like a dog."

may

Indigo indulged me, when we last walked there, with some vast speculations as to how he would have his bricks and lime shunted on to the adjacent railway siding, and bring them to their destination in his boat. May it be my lot to gaze on that distinguished "high art" professor in his boatman's attire. Mr. Ruskin and his followers would faint amid his "stones of Venice" if they only saw him sculling the "bricks of Daubersden" down that rushy stream. They might faint as they liked. Indigo never faints under any circumstances; but I only hope he not cut up rough" at this analysis of his professional and moral attributes. Well, I can't help it-and what's more, I don't care if he does. He will have a copy of this very magazine, served upon him by the Postmaster-General; and if he thinks I have libelled him, he can either buy a hunting-whip, or take the article to some judicious Templar, when he next comes to London to see Wright and the Royal Academy, and enquire if an action won't lie. I'm quite prepared to justify, and I will not only swear to these facts, but a great many more as well. I've told "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" about my eccentric friend; and I hereby defy him to come down to Westminster Hall and deny one word of it.

406

OF THINGS IN GENERAL, AND FOX-HUNTING IN

The Honourable Duncan Dhu Little is a swell and a gentleman: the terms are not synonymous; but on the 30th of last April he was a very heavy swell, and a most unhappy gentleman. He had just returned from the last run of the season with the Pytchley; and as he surveyed his almost spotless leathers and boots in the pier-class, he felt that his occupation was gone for six months at least. Retrospection is the mark of a weak mind; we regret to say that the Honourable Duncan indulged in it to a dangerous extent. And when he looked forward, it was into a blank and dreary wilderness of ball-rooms, dinners, and exotics, the heaviness of turnip-tops and heather, before he again caught sight of the far distant boot-tops and leather of the present season. Like Byron's woman, he has but one thing to live for. Strange anomaly he likes the "leather and prunella" of existence.

"The court, camp, church, the vessel, and the mart," are, in the eyes of Duncan Dhu Little, mere humbug-pure nonentities. Cricket, London, Scotland, and cover-shooting, he votes " a bore;" fishing considerably less amusing than the most stupid of them. There is nothing for it but patience, hope, " Spes alit agricolas ;" but the patrician finds it very hard of digestion.

There is a very general opinion abroad, that an English gentleman's life is one of unmixed success; that he not only likes every species of amusement, but that he is by nature endowed with an equal capability of doing well whatever he puts his hand to. Never was a greater mistake. In every description of sport, as a body, they far excel any other class ; their pluck carries them through much for which their habits of life rather unfit them. A fine English ambition to maintain the sporting character of their country has a great deal to do with it: it sends one man out in a fog you might cut with a knife, to shoot grouse ; or stalk deer, at five o'clock in the morning, and puts up another at the wicket for an over from Mr. Fellowes or Wisden, compared to the danger of which, to the inexperienced, artillery practice is a trifle. To do the Honourable Duncan Dhu Little justice, he had no weak hopes of this kind. He had arrived at that time of life when he knew too well the value of every hour, to throw one away for bubble reputation. So he never did what he disliked; and the consequence was, that he found himself on the 30th of last April with nothing to comfort him but the prospect of the 1st of November,

OF THINGS IN GENERAL, AND FOX-HUNTING IN PARTICULAR. 407

He detests cricket; or rather he hates blows on the shins, and bruised and battered finger-nails. He had been at Lord's; but that was just two-and-twenty years ago, when he fancied himself for a short time in love with Lady Fanny Fitzball. Lady Fanny's passion at that time was cricket (this season 'tis table-turning), for she had two brothers at Eton, and had some personal experience in the game, having fielded for her younger brothers in the large hall at Ball Court. She despised a milksop, and her notion of hardness was cricket. Duncan tried hard to like being knocked about on the fingers (gloves and pads had not been introduced), but having mistaken on a memorable occasion Box for Fuller Pitch, and long-leg for cover-point, he sunk in Lady Fanny's esti mation.

"He had ventured,

Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
But far beyond his depth,"

and when he sunk he did not rise again.

He is too old forty-three-to care for what is called a London sea-. son. He has no fancy for standing in a doorway at Lady A's, perspiring between two draughts, or doing the amiable to an antiquated dowager on the bottom step of the staircase at the Duchess of B's crowded soirée; he likes a good dinner, and often gets one; but that only lasts an hour or two, and certainly does not make up for the loss of his hunting.

Reader, you are a good-natured fellow, and feel truly sorry for his miserable plight for without doubt, though you love hunting to distraction (especially when you get it in Northamptonshire or Leicestershire, on a two-hundred guinea horse), you can manage to pull through May, June, and July, without much difficulty, by cricketing, boating, fly-fishing, horse-racing, flirting, and dining. You still feel sorry for Duncan; and in the height of your good-nature, you suggest "shooting," as a means of keeping him from suicide until November comes again.

If you imagine for one moment that my hunting friend would encumber his feet with hobnailed boots, or those hobnailed boots with turniptops, to supply his host's table with partridges, or to fill the fishmonger's stall at the county town with pheasants, you are greatly mistaken. Besides, he has been at a battue; and he says very frankly that cricket may be sport, and fishing may be sport, but of all the unsportsman-like proceedings in this merry isle, battue-shooting is about the most so. He has wounded a keeper, and pays eighteenpence a-week to a beater for the loss of an eye; his gaiters have once been mistaken for a rabbit, and the top of his hat for a woodcock; this he looks upon as a sufficient sacrifice at the shrine of customs in high life, and the Honourable Duncan Dhu Little shoots no more.

Imagine, my dear friend, if you can, the pain with which a person so situated must feel the advance of spring, and witness the growth of every hedgerow and blade of grass; and the miserable, cut-my-throat sort of feeling with which he retires into the chrysalis state of summer apathy. Imagine, too, the same person, about the beginning of October, as he casts his autumnal coat (about him), and rattles down by rail to give some orders about the new lot of horses he has just added to the stud. He looks like a man just awake from a long sleep. How he