manly exercises which deserve more than a passing notice at our hands. We have dwelt long on sport, from a simple inability to shake off the subject. On rowing and cricket the world has pronounced a very decided opinion. They are mainly represented in England by the great matches; and the former has been too often disgraced by an indifference to fair dealing which ought not to characterise so great a school for the development of self-denial and skill. Instances are too well known to render details necessary in so sweeping an accusation; and the fact of poor men rowing (as formerly was the case with the prize-ring) for large sums of money, seems to show that they act only in these matters as the servants of less scrupulous masters. If we examine the question of health, we cannot endorse the opinion of Professor Skey and the paternal code of physics which accompanied his suggestions. That much injury might be done to naturally delicate oarsmen by overexertion we can well understand, but the art of training in our universities and on our rivers is too well understood to make such cases anything but exceptional. The perfection of rowing, either in a crew or with a pair of sculls, is so beautiful, that we can forgive any amount of enthusiasm short of that which (we can hardly imagine seriously) places it amongst our intellectual employments.

Less cannot be said for cricket. It has its faults, but they are such as attach themselves entirely to infirmities apart from the game. It is a brilliant exhibition of nerve, temper, discipline, activity, and practice, and so characteristic of England, that it has no pied-à-terre worth mentioning in any part of the world, independently of our colonization. Miserable attempts have been made in France and Germany; in America its existence is precarious in the extreme; and what Australia has done for it, has been by the laborious coaching' of English teams. If we had space at our service we might be disposed to treat with some severity the professional element, which has been pampered unnaturally, till it has turned upon its patrons, like the artificially warmed viper in the fable; and we might offer the strongest recommendation to amateurs to throw over a graceless and ungrateful burden, and act for themselves in a game peculiarly adapted to gentlemen in its leading points. There will always be a sufficiency of well-conducted professional talent to serve our purpose, without buying services by any sacrifice of our own position.

Alpine climbing, apart from purposes of science, is an outburst of pent-up animal spirits among men who have not the usual resources of a country life. Mr. Alfred Wills and Mr. Kennedy, Professors Forbes and Tyndall, are not to be deterred from their mountain excursions on the Matterhorn or Wetterhorn, the Jungfrau or the Grindelwald, by any terrors arising from the misfortunes and fatal accidents of less experienced travellers. To the well-trained mountaineer there is in this exercise a maximum of pleasure at a minimum of risk; and when a Leicestershire man talks to them of the risks of avalanches and crevasses, of false steps and rolling boulders, they

may safely reply by a reference to bullfinches and double post and rails, with the chance of suffering from the carelessness or stupidity of others, when their own skill or their horse's capability is never at fault. Accidents will happen, but scarcely one has happened in the Alps which cannot be traced more or less to imprudence, inexperience, or want of nerve. As a rule, men deficient in physique do not usually become oarsmen or Alpine climbers, although neither requires that their natural forces should be supplemented by, an extraordinary amount of strength. In both, training and practice, and a fair share of unimpaired health, will be found to set at nought the bugbears with which their professors have been lately threatened.

Yachting is a gentleman's amusement as pre-eminently English as the name is Dutch. It encourages seamanship and the spirit of enterprise. Its patrons have been, in heroic ages, founders of 'colonies, and pioneers of commerce and civilization;' and it is no small gratification to think that the English flag is carried at the mast-heads of about 1740 vessels, which are fitted out at the private expense of English gentlemen, without any purpose beyond that of agreeable occupation or manly pastime.

We

To enter now upon the round of athletics, or even to attempt any part of them, would be a dangerous task. They have their advocates, who would not fail to penetrate the joints of our harness whereever a weakness of attack or defence should show itself. do not look upon them with the favour which we have always bestowed upon field sports, because we believe that they have been too frequently undertaken to further unworthy purposes. There is a spirit of gambling of a low class attached to them which militates much against them; and the professional element belonging to them generally is of a low class. In the sports of the field there may exist to some extent the same faults, and athletes may argue soundly that the example of the race-course has infected their amusements; but we should reply that such delinquencies were the separable accidents of sport, while athletics appear rather to have been coincident with, or to have sprung up simultaneously with them. We may be wrong, but such is our impression, and we would conclude by advising all the clubs-university, volunteer, civil service, or provincial-formed for the promotion of running, jumping, throwing, or other feats of strength and agility, to discourage that taste for low gambling, and that unennobling inclination for substantial rewards which is becoming well nigh universal. have already said that books on the subjects we have dealt with are almost out of date. The process of writing them with any spirit of philosophical inquiry, and they are worthless without it, is something like breaking a fly upon the wheel; but we must say this for Mr. Trollope and his coadjutors, that they have preserved a tone and sentiment throughout which does them credit, and renders these reprints from St. Paul's Magazine' well worth a place on the shelves of every library.

FOX-HUNTING, ITS FUTURE AND PROSPECTS.

HAS the chase deteriorated? is a question that forces itself often on the attention of those who have its best interest at heart. If so, what are the reasons, and can a remedy be found? Often we are assured by men who should know, that fox-hunting is not what it formerly was; and in some instances we are inclined to believe they are right, though far from agreeing with those who prophecy its total extinction. In the face of all that has been written, we find more hounds than ever, no countries of any consideration are given up, and though the boundaries of some are changed, it is only a concession to altered circumstances, and generally rather conduces to the increase of hunting than detracts from it. That long runs, such as tradition hands down to us as having been enjoyed by our forefathers, do not now take place so frequently as formerly, we admit. But what is the reason? We are not content to do as they did, and give the fox a fair start, but must gallop him down, either with or without hounds, as soon as he is found; consequently, burst as he is in the first ten minutes, he either yields up his life, or dodging short down some ditch, beats hounds that have never time allowed them to ascertain, by using their olfactory nerves, where he is gone. In those happy days so much regretted by many, sport was in the hands of, comparatively speaking, but few people. They had followed it from boyhood, and pursued its pleasures as sportsmen the shooter went out, not for the sake of slaughter, but to exercise his own skill, both in using the gun and getting within fair shooting distance of birds naturally wild and shy; in fact, he pitted his knowledge and skill and the goodness of his dogs against the instinct of the game he was pursuing. We need not point out the contrast between this system and the one in vogue since battues and driving game have come into fashion. The same in hunting. Men go out now, not to see the hounds do their work, but to race against each other. It will, perhaps, be asked how has this change come about; and the only answer to the question is the immense increase in the numbers of those who call themselves sportsmen. This has been in a great measure brought about by the prosperity of the trade and manufactures of the country, and by the facilities that railroads offer to the dwellers in cities to get quickly into any part of the country they may wish. Formerly, when travelling was both slow and expensive, the tradesman who had made money was contented to spend it on those amusements which the town offered; but the cheap and easy transit offered by steam has entirely changed this. Muggins has made money, how or in what manner is nothing to the purpose, but money he has made. The first impulse to a man so situated is to enjoy his good fortune; and as sport is, we believe, deeply implanted in the very nature of every Englishman, to that he naturally turns. Being, probably, a middle-aged man, and not much used to equestrian exercise, he wisely eschews hunting--

it would bring his person into danger, and that forms no part of his proposed plan of enjoyment. But he can shoot. And here, though he may be in more real peril than on horseback, it is not so apparent to him; and if his own list of killed and wounded is not very extensive, he can always find some good-natured fellows with time on their hands who will knock his birds down for him and dine with him afterwards. But where is he to get shooting? Nothing more casy. He has money, and there are plenty of people who will give shooting in exchange for it, and his wants are soon accommodated. But Muggins is a man of pounds, shillings, and pence, and by no means cares to exchange his wealth without a sufficient return, or what he considers a sufficient return. Of the real beauties of the sport he has no appreciation, because he does not understand it; and a few brace of birds killed over a good day in November or December, after a scientific beat, when they are wild, would to him be tame work. Besides, he has no time for that sort of thing. When he does spare a day, he wants a certain amount of shooting, and either to kill or have killed a certain amount of game. The consequence is, he must preserve largely, and get up a great stock of game, to enable him to do this. Putting the best construction on it, and allowing that he will not have foxes killed at the same time, this very fact of game being extensively preserved is prejudicial to hunting, because foxes then come by their living so easily that they are fat and lazy, and have but little inducement held out to learn a scope of country. But the greater probability is that Muggins has found game to be a marketable commodity, and so, having seen that shooting is, after all, an expensive amusement, he lessens that expense by selling all he can. Most likely he argues in this manner: 'I am C no hunting man; I neither know nor care anything about it. I

pay

a large sum for the right of killing the game on this manor, and if 'foxes take my game, why should I not kill them? And Plush says 'that they do kill the game.' A parlous case for the foxes this. We know these doings are not confined to those who rent shootings, as narrow-minded proprietors are often themselves guilty of fox murder; but it must be admitted the hirers of shootings swell the ranks considerably, and every one lessens the chance of sport. Then comes the question, Will this last? We fancy not, and sincerely hope the evil will work its own cure. It was only the other day a landlord publicly delivered his opinion on game preserving in a manner that shows there is a tendency amongst landlords to give up the battue system, and rely on a moderate stock of game for sport. During the past few years a great deal of attention has been directed to the question of over preserving, and farmers are beginning to take the matter into their own hands. In fact, what with the rinderpest, short crops, dry summers, and the price to which land in the present day has risen, they can stand no extra burdens; and where game is preserved to a great extent, the landlord will, ere many years, have to choose between his land tenant and his game tenant. When it comes to this, there is not much difficulty in predicting which party will go to

the wall. Be it not understood that we consider the farmers, as a class, averse to shooting: such is by no means the case. It is only the over preserving they cannot put up with. In fact, they are forced now to calculate much more shrewdly than was formerly the case, and have taken to the ugly custom, when they see a field covered with hares or rabbits, of trying experiments, and discovering how many sheep or oxen what they eat and destroy would keep. And small blame to them. Thus we fancy the evil will work its own cure, and one source of the decline of fox-hunting be removed. With regard to farmers, we think they are becoming far less prejudiced every day, and more inclined to open their eyes to the benefits they derive from the chase: at the same time, more enlightened ideas have shown them the very transient nature of the injury done to their crops. The example of the Midlands proves that where they use wire fences they are willing to remove them during the season; and despite the angry feeling that the late election has engendered in the Shires, and the present dearth of foxes in those localities, we hope such a meritorious practice will continue. Of course some pig-headed curmudgeons there always will be in every county, but they are the exception to the rule. Thus far we may hope better things for the future. But there is another cause for the deterioration of the sport, and one far more difficult to remove. Though our friend Muggins does not hunt himself, he has, perhaps, two or three sons who do, for young men who have the means are nearly sure to take to the pigskin. Now these young fellows have the means to purchase good horses, and will have them. They can easily, also, learn how to ride hard, if not well, but as regards the science of hunting they are all at sea. They fancy hounds have nothing to do but to get out of their way, and they are quite right in going as hard as they can after them. They have no one to tell them better; and if they go to books on the subject, with very few exceptions they see nothing but glowing accounts of men going away with two or three couple of hounds, and after doing unheard-of feats in the jumping line, distancing all but a chosen few. Naturally they try to emulate these grand performances, and hounds are altogether disregarded. Verily those who instituted the custom of recording and lauding this systematic over-riding of hounds have much to answer for. Men are always prone enough to this evil, and when fields were smaller, and composed only of those who may fairly be termed sportsmen, there was mischief enough done; but now, when crowds upon crowds flock to every fashionable fixture, each with the determination to ride as hard and as fast as his horse can carry him, hounds have but little chance indeed, and it is no wonder that huntsmen have got into the custom of continually lifting hounds and making casts forward for miles at a gallop. The only comfort left the lover of hunting is, that when hounds can run for any time together the greater part of the crowd is lost sight of; for few of this class can go beyond ten minutes, by which time their steeds are pumped out, and should the second horses not turn up,