afraid of being. Or, again, he rode to a halloa; upon which arises the very natural, but somewhat perplexing query-Why did'nt he ride to the hounds? and so on, until the little hazel-eyed girl with the auburn locks, who has been gradually owning to the powers of a red jacket, sets him down as an imposter and a coward. At which visible impression our friend, waxing wrath, goes to work in the next thing of any pace and distance, very much like a lover or a madman (perhaps both), and finishes by coming back on another man's hack, and with the capital excuse this time, that he managed to kill his horse before the pack did their fox. Yet even then, it is much like the man flogging the soldier-high or low, there's no pleasing them; and he is "a brute and a beast-his favorite indeed! fine favour he has shown-a cold-blooded, hard-hearted, unfeeling monster!" The old gentleman himself perceptibly avoids him; while mamma, who, like Mary Anne, had entertained some idea of making a match between them, proceeds to treat it with a cold, matter-of-fact, counting-house countenance, as if he had broken a tumbler, or lost a snuffbox. What had it cost? Hundred and fifty guineas. Indeed! as much as that? and would it require as much to replace it?

The disaster which Mr. Cooper has portrayed with so much effect, we are happy to say, is one which now seldom occurs; the improved, and now generally approved, system of summering the hunter in the house, together with the relay of second, or perhaps third horses for the out-and-out fast ones, has gradually spoilt that simile, at least as far as the killed and wounded are considered, in which Homer, Virgil, Nimrod, or some other learned man, declared the chase to be the image of war. Indeed, taking the average of the last ten seasons, we should calculate the swell countries were the freest from any fatal effects of this description; while a variety of other causes tend to show that it is, on the whole, a rather mistaken though very common idea to count on the brilliancy of a day's sport by the number of horses which dropt in it. For example, these mishaps now most frequently take place-rarely, in fact, at any other time-when a long frost has just broken up, and the country rides more than usually heavy; the horses, from the same reason, being worse prepared to go over or through it. On such occasions many a good one will succumb to a bit of a burst, of which, in proper trim, he would with impunity_stand four or five such in a day; or even, as in the case of Ned Bates's mare, when Sir Richard Paleston hunted the Wrexham country, fall as if struck with apoplexy, before a fox has taken more than a turn or so in cover. In short, we will venture to say that in these days of high-breeding and high-feeding, a great many more horses die from a want of work, than of having too much of it.

SALMON FISHING IN THE HIGHLANDS.

BY PISCATOR.

ENGRAVED BY GODDEN, FROM A SKETCH BY LEWIS,

Writing on Highland sports is at best but second-hand sort of work; a good deal like the critiques on the last performance at the Italian Opera House, or on one of Jem Robinson's grand rushes, or Prince Albert's portraits-all pretty certain of being "about the very finest thing that ever was seen.' Still we readily believe that the trumpet has never yet been sounded too loud in favour of the diversions practised over the border; there is a high dash of enterprise and earnestness about them, one and all, very inviting, and rendered not the less so by the few opportunities of finding such recommendations (pure and unadulterated) in any other quarter of the United Kingdom. Here, in whatever line the sportsman purposes to occupy himself, whether affecting the mountain or the flood, whether in chevying the wild roe, or catching the wild salmon, he may reckon with tolerable safety on the same wary characteristic spirit in the enemy, and the same national grandeur in the various scenes and situations into which the ardour of pursuit will hurry him. Fishing, eight times in ten, is said to be finished almost immediately that it begins, or, in plain matter of fact, that when you hook them you have them; a very different game, however, from this must be played with that king of the river and grandee in the sea, the salmon; a rough customer, who only shows fight when others would give in, and does his best to put his opponent into difficulties immediately on finding he is in them himself. And then something further is required beyond the elegant well-directed cast, or the happy artistic strike-a little more power and science to keep up with or counteract the efforts of a resolute, downright, determined monster, that will run out as fast as a buck, pull as hard as a horse, and jump as high as a house! a very water fiend, who, after forcing you through fearful passes, down mighty falls, full worthy of their title, and at length, vi et armis, into his own element: after standing a good half-hour's bay, and continuing all through the battle a terrible stretch on your line and your temper, will in the end afford ample satisfaction by rendering up an account of some dozen pounds in honest avoirdupois, a sight of which alone shall excite the admiration of your friends, and the envy of your fishmonger.

Sportsmen are not, or rather were not some years since, remarkable for their attachment or proficiency in literary pursuits, and yet there is scarcely a work, not even excepting Blackstone or Euclid, which requires a more determined course of study than a book of