66 THE SPORTING REVIEW. MARCH, 1843. EMBELLISHMENTS. HUNTING A LA FRANÇAISE," BY COOK, AFTER DE DREUX, 'TIS AND MY DELIGHT OF A SHINY NIGHT," DRAWN AND ETCHED BY STANDFAST. CONTENTS. HYDE MARSTON; OR, RECOLLECTIONS OF A SPORTSMAN'S LIFE; Page 131 137 141 SPORTING PASSAGES IN MY LIFE, BY LORD WILLIAM LENNOX. 169 THE ENGLISH FIRESIDE, BY JOHN MILLS TO READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS. THE Editor regrets he cannot make use of "My First Drive." Our A.M. will write again. He will see that we have taken care of him: "love me love my dog." "A Young Subscriber" has our best thanks: his request has been, in part, complied with. Vols. I to VIII., bound in fancy cloth boards, and lettered, are now ready. SINCE the days of Milton worse language, probably, never fell from angels' mouths than that poured forth at the door of the coach-office, by the pair spoken of in the last chapter. Indeed, the bard of Eden might have added some gems to his vocabulary, had his whereabouts, on that occasion, been Islington instead of Paradise. Maledictions, like showers of poisoned arrows, hissed through their clenched teeth; they swore-but our volume not professing to deal in ethics, we refrain from particularizing, and proceed with our narrative, even as the "York and Leeds" did towards its destination. As we glided off, performing our galope to the music of the guard's yard of tin, my companion, drawing a Welsh wig over his ears, and burrowing into his corner, thus bespake me : "What a shocking thing is ingratitude!-What horrible reprobates those men must be!-fellows for whom we have done a greater kindness than their best friends ever dreamt of!-anathematizing their benefactors after a fashion that might astonish a regiment of heavy horse! It would be a fitting judgment were Providence to throw in our way, on next year's Derby, every shilling we save them on this year's Leger. The cuckoldy knaves! What business have they in the north? And now, good night! I always feel drowsy in a carriage; it's the only place in which I ever know what it is to take my natural rest in comfort. Somehow or another, I never can sleep in a bed. To be sure it's not very often I make the experiment." The reader, being in possession of the fact that these recollections refer to a score of years ago, will have no difficulty in understanding that, although the following morning was that of the Sabbath, we found the High Street of Doncaster more like the Square of St. Mark's during the carnival, than the resort of the sober citizens of a discreet English borough. Not then, as now, had orthodoxy taken the chronology of the turf under its episcopalian wings, and so adjusted the occurrence of certain meetings peculiar to the aristocracy, as to shield from all jeopardy the immortality of the nobility. These, however, were days of grace for neither lords nor commons; and scarcely had we returned to the perpendicular from the figure of Z which we had been describing during the last sixteen hours, than we found ourselves surrounded by a crowd as motley as the population of a masquerade. However, as it was high noon of a sunny Sunday, being myself surmounted by an ancient Palais Royal casquette, in colour and cock resembling a cardinal's hat in convulsions, while my friend's noble front the "semblance of a worsted clout had on," we had no reason to be fastidious, and proceeded unmolested to our apartments in a guise which, on any other occasion, would have secured us a lodging in the round-house. I have often wondered how it happened that, among the universes of books with which I have come in contact, not one, to my recollection, even hints how the animal man ought to be treated after having undergone, during the space of a summer's night, an incessant process of personal violence, in an atmosphere containing scarcely as much oxygen as would preserve a frog from fainting. What though mails are no longer of the things that be, are there not railway carriages wherein, during the watches of the night, the lieges, whom chance or choice lead to travel by iron, are submitted to villanous airs, to say nothing of the motion which, on certain lines, I could mention, very much resembles that peculiar to the ocean "when the stormy winds do blow?" Therefore, do I volunteer to be thy physician, O wayfarer Let it be had in mind that I do not design my prescription for your regular locomotive Sardanapalus-a gentleman who, in his transits, passes from the castle of one noble to the abbey of another; my ambition being only to minister to such as seek to take their pleasure at their inn. The traveller in this category having (we will assume), for the space of twelve hours, undergone much from rough portage and the want of fresh fragrance, finds himself, in company of a leather portmanteau (or certain carpet-bags, as the case may be), deposited in the chamber of some rural caravansary: he who arrives in a great city has everything prepared to his hand, the only condition of his comfort being, as George Robins would say, that his arrangements are made "regardless of expense." And, here, to show the necessity of caution in matters of charge, I venture upon a digression, which, should it not prove particularly amusing, the reader will tolerate for sake of the moral. About the period to which this history relates, it came to pass that a friend of mine, being in exigency of funds for his necessities (a circumstance, indeed, that by no means exclusively affected that particular individual of my acquaintance), turned his face, one November morning, towards that auriferous region known to the youth of this metropolis as Burlington Gardens. When or how the antecedent twenty-four hours were passed, I, unfortunately, am unable to declare, but it may be sufficient to state, that noon was fast approaching as he turned into Bond-street from Oxford-street, his inward and outward man bearing the relation to each other that Hecla does to Iceland; in short, though surrounded by an atmosphere tending towards zero, his coppers were hard upon the boil. Ill-natured people may draw ill-natured conclusions from these premises, and I don't see how they are to be prevented. Well, pressing onwards for the golden coast in this state of internal temperature, our "friend in need" espied, in the window of one Owen, a fruiterer, certain vegetable temptations which, in a similar case, might have served as pleas of justification for the backsliding of our common mother. These were sundry wicker contrivances called pottles-overflowing with luscious berries more exquisite a thousand times than the golden pippins of the Hesperides. Imagine the effect of cornucopias of strawberries in November upon the proprietor of an oesophagus at fever heat;" hissing hot; think of that, Master Brook." The gentleman with the throat on fire did as any other gentleman in the same predicament might have done: he stepped in, and asked the price of Mr. Owen's berries. "Seven shillings an ounce," said the fellow behind the counter, accenting the two first words, while the two latter were inaudible to the inquirer, whose sense of hearing was not the most acute of the five. The urgency being great, the customer seized the fruit, and, having devoured a couple of pottles, 'proceeded to deposit fourteen shillings in liquidation of his reckoning. "Beg pardon," said the shopman, "you've eaten thirteen ounces, and there's four pound eleven shillings to pay." If ever there was an excuse for negotiating a trifle of discount at 100 per cent., surely it was after such an episode in life as this. In a few minutes the sufferer was closeted with the usurer. The money-lender, of course, "had just parted with the last shilling he could spare; but there was a party in Covent Garden for whom he occasionally acted, that would advance a couple of hundreds, on the condition that a few chests of oranges were taken as part cash." At this intimation the borrower looked as grave as he was able. My most excellent friend," he observed, "I have already this morning done as much in the greengrocery line as a 66 |