but one visitor (one female acquaintance who had ever entered our doors), and that she was anything but an agreeable one I could plainly see, or one that my mistress could cr ought to associate with was equally evident. She was handsome, although no longer young; tall, very stout, and dressed in the gaudiest style, with a profusion of rings and other jewellery. I detested her the moment she approached me, and put her down as a highly-scented specimen of a very low race. I believe her to have been a Jewess; but her plau-ible, meretricious, and half-foreign language was too clearly deceitful either to please or captivate any but the inexperienced and weak: her flattery, adulation, and cringing, together with a certain perceptible cunning, impressed me with a danger and dread lest my young mistress should yield herself to their pernicious influence. She never called but twice; and I discovered that upon each occasion she had been sent by his lordship's direction, who was under some deep obligation to her, known probably but to themselves alone.

The presentiment of coming evil, however, was filling all with a certain dulness and weight, which expressed itself in anxious and unsettled looks. Too soon, alas! with the suddenness of a thunderbolt it burst upon us, crushing, tearing, annihilating, in its merciless fall, the fairest flower that e'er bloomed on earth.

My trembling heart beats with renewed terror as I attempt to paint the horrors of a scene witnessed by me alone; but I will relate, in a few words, the cruel and merciless end of the lovely and tender Julia, and by which I was again thrown into the lowest dregs of the "Fancy." Southampton. A. H. B.

TO HOW DEN.

ENGRAVED BY E. HACKER, FROM A PAINTING BY E. CORBET.

Here is a chance for a judge to pick up a good one-not in all the crowd and bustle of the fair, or rather of the day before, for the best business at Howden is over before the fair begins-but after a quiet look over the grey as he comes in from The Grange. He is four off, by Chanticleer, and saw hounds a few times last season. Poor "Nimrod," in his famous book on The Condition of Hunters, tells a story, somewhat against himself, of how when he took to farming in Hampshire he drew a couple of hundred pounds to go and buy bullocks at Basingstoke. On his way, however, he met the dealer's man, with a wonderfully clever grey horse in hand, and of course they naturally pulled up to have a word or two over so promising a nag. In quite as much a matter of course, "Nimrod" got his leg over him, and it ended by the two hundred going in a lump for the horse, instead of to its original purpose of buying beasts. Still, if we remember rightly, the moral was all the best way, for the grey turned out a clipper, and doubled the outlay very shortly afterwards.

Howden and Horncastle are the two great horse-fairs of the country, and the very names of these two towns are as suggestive of such dealings as Mark Leno is for corn or Hereford for cattle.

THE CRIB AND THE CRAYON.

"When practised eyes proportions harmonized can trace,
The attributes of use appear, combined with grace."

KNOLL.

(Continued.)

To lay down precise data as to the conformation of the horse by declaring rules for the pourtrayal of the respective parts as they exist in relation to each other, is obviously impracticable as regards universal applicationt, the variety of breeds and kinds, and the purposes for which the animal is required, rendering such exactitude impossible, and we only here purpose to present a few precepts which cannot fail to prove of some service to the pencil of an amateur.

The height of a horse is invariably measured by the hand of four inches-the proportions, by the head.

The reader will be pleased to imagine before him a horse of fifteen hands in height, the length of the head being about twenty-six inches. From the top of the withers to the bottom of the hoof, and from the point of the chest to the extremity of the hind-quarters, the measurement is about the same-from the top of the head to the ground being usually three heads and a quarter.

The length of the neck is one head and a-half and one-eighth. From the neck roots to the back, a quarter head. From the neck roots to the lower parts of the windpipe, one head and one-eighth.

The breadth of the fellers to the extremity of the belly is one head. For the back, three-quarters of a head may be given; for the croup, one head. The breadth of the haunch is three-quarters and one-third. The breadth of the arm one quarter and one-third. From the tip of the head to the beginning of the windpipe is half-a-head. From the withers to the elbows, one head and one quarter and one-eighth. From the elbows to the hoof, one head and a-half. The breadth of the shoulders, one-half and one-third. From the middle of the back to the middle of the belly is one head and one-third. From the elbow to the flank, one head and a-half. The breadth of the knees, one-third of a-quarter. The breadth of the hocks is one-quarter. The breadth of the hoofs, three-quarters of a quarter.

From the lower part of the windpipe to the lower part of the chest is half-a-head and one-third. From the lower part of the chest to the knee, three-quarters of a head. From the knee to the fetlock, half-ahead and one-third. For the fetlocks, half-a-quarter; and for the hooves, three parts of a quarter may be taken.

On the beauty of a small head, large and prominent eyes, ears thin, erect, and quick in motion, and nostrils expansive enough for the ready admission and expulsion of air, we need not expatiate, intending merely to give the rules of proportion as appertaining to the respective parts. Betwixt the ears, the measurement is three parts of a quarter of a head; betwixt the eyes, one-quarter and one-eighth of a head. The istance betwixt the nostrils and the point of the eye is half-a-head;

above the nostrils, is one-quarter. The distance from point to point of the two cheek bones, one-quarter and one part of a quarter. The extremity of the two nostrils is one-quarter and one-third. The breadth of the head is two quarters. The distance between the nostrils is a half-quarter. Across the bridge of the nose to the under jaw is a quarter and an eighth part. The breadth of the cheek-bone is a quarter-eighth of a head.

The above measurements for which we are mainly indebted to Laurie and other authorities, will probably be found quite sufficient for the amateur to guide his crayon by. Further details he can work out for himself. We would, however, direct the attention of those who have not the facilities and advantages of studying from the crib for proportions, or the freedom of nature for action to the Panathenaic Frieze, in the British Museum, no less than one hundred and ten horses being represented, not any two of which are in the same position this marvellous work of art, by Phidias one of the great sculptors of the Greeks, being eulogized by the first judges for fidelity and beauty:-"The horses appear to live and move,' "exclaimed Flaxman, "to roll their eyes, gallop, prance, and curvet. The veins of their faces and legs seem distended with circulation. In them are distinguished the hardness and decision of bony forms from the elasticity of tendon and softness of flesh. The beholder is charmed with their deer-like lightness and the elegance of their make; and although the relief is not above an inch from the background, and they are so much smaller than nature, we can scarcely suffer reason to persuade us they are not alive."

SHOOTING IN THE FORESTS.

BY R.

The diversity of the American forests is only equalled by their extent. In some parts of the forest the trees, the underbrush, and even the great weeds are so matted together by vines and briars and rattans that the hunter has to cut a passage for a hundred yards at a time, and often much farther; whilst in other places the trees stand so far apart and are as clear of undergrowth as the ground near the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. "Ash flats," "elm flats," and other low spots, are sometimes as bare as a turnpike-road, or else covered with a growth of palmetto weeds, sour grass, or sedge. Cane-brakes, whose tall canes grow closely together, and which vary in size from a penny-whistle to that of a stove-pipe, cover dozens of square miles, and are as impregnable as Richmond, Virginia. Cedar-brakes are scarcely more easily penetrated for although they grow less closely together, the ground under them produces a tall rank-growing grass, amongst which lies hidden many a fallen cedar, whose sharp, concealed branches are ready to "stub" the skins of the intruder. The "wild peach ridge" is open enough for the "still hunter" (stalker) to move easily about, though the trees grow thickly together, their tops interlapping, and thus they choke out all undergrowth. Other parts of the forests are thickets with

close-growing dogwood, thorn, upawn, and other thickets of shrubs, whose sharp thorns make them as difficult of negociation as are our black-thorn and gorse coverts.

Deep, too, in these forests the wandering hunter often comes upon large quiet lakes, which in the winter are covered with wild fowl, and where in summer the wild beasts quench their thirst. Lonely swamps, too, often bar his passage, where production and decay run riot-where the toad and lizard spend the livelong day-where the serpent crawls from his den amongst the tangled ferns and rank rushes, and pipes forth his propensities to destroy-where the green weed-covered pools fester and ferment, as the foul miasma bubbles up, sending its poison through the air-where, from heat and moisture, you can almost see the fungus grow beneath your eyes, and to which the foul-feeding vultures retire, when gorged with their carrion, to sit and stare with dullglazed eyes for hours and sometimes days together. Again, in pleasant contrast to this, you come across some bubbling spring, at the foot of some mossy bank, and, looking down the valley, you can trace its course as it winds like a silver thread over its pebbly bottom, till it loses itself at last in some larger stream.

It is impossible to convey an idea upon paper of the American wilderness. No English forest resembles it in the least; for here the woodmen keep them in order, and the windfalls are found directly, and are chopped up for firewood; but in the former all is natural-the forest giant, the middle-aged tree, and the sappling when they fall are left to rot away, and scarce one in a thousand of the prostrate trees is used by the hunter for his camp fire.

Roaming these forest solitudes, the hunter, whether Indian or white, has to rely upon himself alone; and the necessity of his situation has led him to cultivate his senses to the utmost; and extraordinary indeed are sometimes the exhibitions of the keenness of these trained senses.

We look often with wonder and surprise upon the instincts-the almost reasoning powers of insects and animals. The bee, the ant, the bear, and the beaver display an intelligence that seems for their particular purposes superior to the wisdom of man; but it will be found to fall far short of the human forest-rangers; for the Indian is far ahead of the brute in sagacity, whilst the white trapper excels the Indian. The sight of the hunter is cultivated till it rivals or excels the touch of the blind in delicacy of perception: the slightest touch of a passing object on the leaves, trees, or earth, leaves an impression which is deep and visible to him, though to the novice no more trace would be observable than the path of a ship on the sea or the bird through the air. The dweller in cities who looks into the forest would see nothing beyond the external objects of grasses, leaves, and trees; but the hunter's eye detects the passage of the various animals which have crossed the path. In this knowledge lies the difference between the hunter and the sportsman the former depends upon his experience in woodcraft to secure his game; the latter employs the instincts of his hounds or sporting dogs to find and assist him to kill his quarry. It is this knowledge which governs the war-path and the chase. When excelled in, it makes the chiefs amongst the redmen, the trappers most famous amongst the whites; for be he white or red, he is the best who can follow the coldest trail, yet leave no traces behind him of his own tracks. The stride