There is hardly anything about which more has been said, or less read, than about shooting. And the reason of this disparity, perhaps, is, because the general run of ramrod writers say nothing new that is true; and of that which is really quite true, there is much that is clearly not at all new. So, when long yarns are exhibited either to ear or to eye, a man who knows what he is about-a man who really knows, and by actual practice, all about shooting-naturally enough rebels against being bored with the imbecilities of mere scribblers and talkers. It is all Hookey HAWKER to him. He has had enough of the notorious Colonel's treatise, and more than enough of the twaddle cuckooed by the Colonel's copyists. But, whatever may be the cause of people's not liking to be indoctrinated with talk about shooting, or why we all are apt to revolt against being drugged with theses in print upon the subject, the fact itself (as just stated) is unquestionable. We all know that every man, almost, has a "book in him" on shooting; and what we fear is, that it will come out of him -all over us. Is this instinctive horror of the sayings of good shots always perfectly rational? I think not; and I will tell you why. In the first place, gossip is good, in its way, whether it be about shooting or about anything else that is manly and sporting. In the next place, a man who writes or talks to us honestly, and without disagreeable dogmatism, about any sporting subject (whatever it may be), deserves to be listened to, even if his readers are obliged to dissent from some of his opinions. Besides, although we may hear nothing new (as is generally the case, and the objection), what we hear or read, nevertheless, may be agreeable gossip enough, especially to those who are not tyros, who are not boys, and who don't want to be taught how to take the field and bag the birds, as if they had a gun in their hands for the first time in their lives. When a

clever contributor (and there is more than one such) to these pages gives us the results of his experience as a sportsman in the shooting season, we prize the "wrinkles" as pearls of wisdom, because they are the pearls of a practical hand, masterly strung together, and cleverly investing the whole string with all the life and spirit of which the subject is susceptible.... To the sportsman, time flows away smoothly, through delicious scenes and pleasant places--now through fields and where corn was, then through fields where turnips are, through the mossy moor and the wild forest, the lofty hills and the smiling valleys, the old woods and the new preserves; the firmament above bright, delight everywhere, and the birds....But we must not say anything about the birds; for if I once begin, Jove only knows when and where I shall stop.

THE PARK, PARK-HORSES, ETC.

About six o'clock the Park, in the season (as, of course, every countrified cousin knows), gets pretty full. I have seen a good many seasons; and I don't remember one in which wealth and luxury have glittered more agreeably or less ostentatiously than in that one which is just ended. I allude to the equipages generally; but the aliquid amari must have arisen to many a man besides myself, upon whose brow Time tells of four-in-hand. Four-in-hand turn-outs, however, I suppose, though, were very seldom driven in the Park, whatever may have been the case on the road to Bedfont-ay, even before one-horse broughams and the other cruelty-cart-like innovations of these modern times, in which making money, setting beggars on horseback, and rendering homage to railway kings and swindling bankers, are the ordinary things of the day. And what a legion of parvenus prance about the Park now! To every Jew, jobbing, low-looking unit that one used to see formerly, a hundred and eighty, at least, present themselves now, as the representatives of what politicians politely call "progress." Progress! a pretty piece of progress, this turning things topsy-turvy!

As to the horses, I think I never saw so many horses that one likes the look of, precisely because they are not park-horses; and, for obvious reasons, the Ride never had in it so large a number of Arab horses, with their short, mean quarters, hatchet-like necks, satin coats, and corky elasticity of step.

With regard to the men, there certainly are not seen now nearly so many heavy weights-a result, possibly, of a diminution in the number of post-prandial bottles of port drunk in these degenerate days of claret and French fashions. A full-waistcoated fellow, I suppose, will soon be as rarely met with as a good fellow; and corpulence will be confined almost exclusively to the turtle-fed celebrities of the city of London. But, after all, my notion-and it is nothing more-that there are not so many heavy weights now as formerly, may be quite wrong.

THE SPORTING PAPERS.

I am old enough to remember perfectly well so far back as the starting of all the sporting papers. Each and every start (a matter

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of history now, so to speak) is as fresh in my memory this minute as if it were only yesterday. The now-political million-mouthed Dispatch commenced its career as a sporting paper, and nothing but a sporting paper. To one George Kent, the journalistic historian of the Turf and the Ring, this paper, now so highly and deservedly prized by the hydra-headed multitude both in town and country, owes its lowly origin. Kent, like many in his line before him, and still more after him, died in the grip of poverty; unhappily, too, as I have heard, leaving a large family in a state of destitution. Poor fellow! his general bearing and demeanour were in striking contrast with his calling as a Ring reporter. What he was in reality, I don't know; but his manners were unexceptionable, and there was an air about him of retiring, gentlemanly good-breeding, that went a great way with men who, like myself, never would admit any necessary connexion between a coarse mind and sporting tastes. To his courtesy I have over and over again, in my boyhood, been indebted for the favour of getting within the privileged circle, close to the ropes, and in this way seeing well many a manly battle bravely fought; so I should be ungrateful, as well as unjust, if I did not readily step aside to recognise the amenities that marked this fast unfortunate man. I said the Dispatch set out as a sporting paper. I think, but am not quite positive (being but a boy at the time) that it was then the only sporting paper which challenged any public attention at all. After a time, the political element pervaded this print; and under the editorial auspices of "Publicola"-one of the hardest hitters in the kingdom-it became what it is-nothing, if not political. Mr. Williams was almost as effective with his fists as with his pen, when he was a youngster in H.M. naval service; even then, I have heard, dealing out blows with both instruments in a singularly vigorous style. He had been an officer, and was (I believe, to the day of his death) a gentleman as well as a popular writer. Not long after, I I think, after the Dispatch gave the go-by to sporting matters, the Sunday Times-which, too, had been a purely political organ, brought out, it is believed, by a Mr. White, an "Independent Whig" writer, of a Scourge-ing school of politics, and soon afterwards taken in hand by Mr. Harvey, the present Commissioner of the City Police, a capable man, and worthy of an infinitely higher post-took up the running in that direction, combining with politics sporting. So the mantle of the Dispatch seems to have descended on the Sunday Times -on the newspaper which the most satirical writer of the day rather ill-naturedly designates the Sunday Flash.

We now come to the TITAN of sporting weeklies-Bell's Life— which began its career a good many years ago, now. It first saw the light in a very small shop, at the corner of a little court in Fleetstreet, a seaman and a shopman standing godfathers for the thenpuling infant. The sea.nan's name, I think, was Bell; the shopman's, Chambers; and I, moreover, believe that they both were shrewd, respectable men. But theirs was the opposition coach; for Life in London-not Bell's-was the original regular conveyance. The latter, therefore, stands something in the place, like, of a parent to the present widely-circulating, and so far powerful, publication. Life in London's pedigree is none of the purest. Born in the

Georgian era, suckled by an Irish spouter, brought up by an English barrister who was capable of better things, it was only the spawn of the "Bob Logic" blackguardism and "Corinthian" cachexy prevalent in those days of scarce-disguised dissoluteness-none the worse, though, for being undisguised, for

Well, the less often we all see it, the better.

To found a paper upon such a basis was clearly impossible; to ephemeralize it was easy enough. Bell's broke its head-the seaman swamped it. In short, Life in London ebbed but a very little while indeed; and a hundred guineas was readily accepted, to bury the bantling in merited oblivion.

Such, it is believed, was the origin of Bell's Life. How its resources were developed by D-y, by D-g, and by others; how it bloomed under the fostering care of Clements; how it grew, and became "big and burly," yet not "studious of ease;" how, in short, it became what it is-how it came to be considered an oracle, topping all the weekly things in the sporting line-how all this came about, needs not be narrated. No; nor need I take the trouble of sayingbecause everybody knows it-that it is an admirably-conducted paper, containing as comprehensive and complete a record of all that is going on in the sporting world, as it is possible to compile.

The only paper now remaining to be mentioned is The Field. Well done, well dosed, too, with capital, richly illustrated, its career was neither long nor brilliant, although costly enough. The fate of this pictured paper for "gentlemen sportsmen" was rather unlucky, rather premature; and it fell from the high position to which it aspired, certainly not for want of spirit, but probably owing to an appeal made and at an immense current and constant expense, too— to a class of readers not numerous enough to remunerate its proprietary, whose loss, I should think (for I speak not by rule of this print) must be written with at least three, if not four, ciphers, preceded by a highish figure. But newspaper people have ever plenty of pluck; and so The Field, it seems, is still backed by a plucky polyglot party-whether or not at fearful odds, I can't say, because I really don't know anything at all about the paper now.

If I were privileged, like a clever contributor to these pages, to publish my "confessions," too, the "Confessions of a Sporting Man," I should be obliged to confess that, although they are all well enough in their way, I don't much like any of the sporting hebdomadalsthat is, for my own reading. There are some things in them that set at nought all ordinary notions of their decencies and proprieties. To be sure, I am old ("Old Grey," as they call me down at my old place in the country), and I may not be the best judge of what is opposed to good taste, or of what is at variance with good manners, or of what is repugnant to real refinement, or what has the sparkle and spirit of sporting. But, if I don't know what kind of reading other people dislike, at all events I know what I like to read myself. And I must say--although to be au courant with what is going on in

the sporting spheres from day to day, I can't do without my Bell'sI never am so much at home as when I sit quietly down with this monthly collection of sporting things in my hand. If the reason Why? were asked, I should say-Because at least it has always the negative merit of never having in its pages the objectionable things that are, of necessity, admitted into a fourpenny paper designed for "the diffusion of useful knowledge" amongst all (sporting) classes, but more especially for the delectation of the somewhat unscrupulous "million" an aggregation of gentry who have tykes and tastes, dirt and diseases, not at all agreeable to the higher order, or, indeed, hardly to any cultivated, respectable class, whether fast or slow.

THE STRICKEN DEER.

The sketch in a back number of this publication is pretty; in fact, it is exquisite. But I don't like the subject of it. I know that a critic who objected to any subject whatever, that was not unquestionably low and grossly material, which this indubitably is not, would be only laughed at for his ignorance. We are, however, not all blessed with a taste for high art. Painters may be placed in a category by themselves, just as Poets are. The divine afflatus is bred and born in them both. Now, that is not precisely the case with me, certainly; nor is it so perhaps with most men. At any rate, in one word, I again say, the subject isn't "my sort." It is suggestivenot of mirth and jollity, but of sadness and sentimentality. For my part, I certainly was not born a poet or a painter; and my love of high art, as 'tis called, never elevated me to anything higher than the box of a mail coach, upon which, by the way, I have sate many a happy mile beside some of the best artists (vulgo drivers) of which Old England ever boasted in days the glory of which has gone by, but which days, with their enchantment, are written right plainly on the tablet of my memory. Well, give me a four-in-hand turn-out, and a pleasant subject, as I intimated before. It is a great mistake, though, to suppose sporting men are like Shakespeare's Beatriceborn to speak all mirth and no matter. Some of us are too much the other way. But even Dr. Johnson (I mean the dictionary doctor), who was a deal too serious, if not indeed almost melancholy mad at times-even this great man and grave moralist liked things cheerful to look at, and would always have his rooms papered with the gayest patterns and the brightest tints. Now, the stricken, be it deer or darling, isn't at all cheerful. It is, on the contrary, a saddening sight, a picture that puts one out of spirits. So I vote, like a grumbling old Opposition M.P. as I am, against engravings of stricken deers and all such sombre things.

It may be perhaps whispered that the writer of these few lines, the gossiping "Old Grey" himself is stricken. He may be a country gentleman plundered by a London money-lender, by a bill-broker, or other beggar-making blackguard. He may be a regimental officer merely-pining in comparative obscurity, without anticipated promotion, and seeing young CECILS every day put over his head. being placed on the Staff may even seem to him now as distant as death, although almost as desirable as heaven. He may be, in short,

The