The Noble Sportsman. 33 knowledge and hearty love of sport, not to mention the unselfish nature of the true sportsman, make him a welcome addition to any sporting party. Take the manner of his life then, as he has described it to us while we ate our luncheon together by the moorland spring, and while the gillies were emptying the bags on the heather beside us :-"In November, at my brother-inlaw's, who keeps foxhounds, but hardly hunts, and leaves their management to me, we have the kennels and drafts to put in order; to see the young hounds out; to enter them with a little cub-hunting; and as the weather gets wintry, and the grass well down in the ditches, we get into the full swing of the hunting season. If frost sets in steadily, the young fellows are off to town, but one or two old ones like myself, who don't care for London drawing-rooms and clubs, find the country still pleasant. We steal quietly through the covers for a pheasant or a cock-enough for our own larder and for presents to neighbours --but battues are not in fashion with us. When the weather is open we hunt thrice a week, and on the idle days I tie a few salmon flies, read The Times, or a good novel, when so rare a thing is to be had." We discovered later that his reading is more extensive. He is Eton bred, and didn't he surprise us once with a pretty jeu d'esprit in Latin, in good set longs and shorts, right in quantities and in sense! But we must not interrupt our friend: As the hunting-season draws to an end, and the birds begin to sing, I am off for the North; for above all sport, far above any other amusement, stands salmon-fishing. I am an old fellow, and I tell you the most exciting moment of my life is when I strike the first fish of the season, and he makes the reel scream as he takes off thirty yards of the line at a dash. For two months of spring I spend most of daylight in the Spey,--not fishing it, as the luxurious Southerns do their Tay and Tweed, from a boat, but on foot; from the bank where it is deep, and wading where it gets wade-able." We have sometimes watched our stalwart friend stalking through the quick streams below the Cruives of Spey, and throwing a long straight line from that huge rod of his, while the bits of floating ice popple harmlessly against his well-cased legs (evκvýpudas). But thus he went on :- "In midsummer time there is a space of two months when there is really nothing to do, and I often spend the months of June and July at a pretty German watering-place. I like that country and the people, and it is amusing to figure what might be made of such materials for sporting purposes, if the people were but awake to the capabilities of their country. When the cherries are over, and Baden is getting too hot, it is time for Scotland again; and I am here VOL. XL.-NO. LXXIX. C always before the 12th, with the excuse of something to do in the way of preparation, however well M'Bean looks after his kennel. Grouse-shooting is the perfection of steady autumn amusement. No day without a bag! The autumn months are pleasanter in Scotland too than anywhere else I have tried in Europe, and the sport suits the season; nice easy work, with exercise enough to brace and bring the constitution up to its highest health. One might tire, indeed, of the unceasing repetition of good grouse-shooting, such as we have it here, varying only in a few birds more or less in the bag, as the day has been wet and windy, or too hot and still, or just the light breeze that bears the scent to the dogs, and keeps them and us cool. This work might at last tire one, were it not for that dear deceitful river which lures me out day after day to whip its streams, and at this season rewards me only with the sight of a big tail, as the monster flounders through the water beside my fly; or if I do hook him by chance, and succeed in landing him through all that broken water and rock, I find him a black-a-moor, such as we were condemned to eat yesterday." Reader, the fish of yesterday was an excellent new-run salmon, in good condition. The cook had dressed it in slices, as salmon should be dressed, and we approved even of its rich colour, though inclining to copper. The dark river soon gives that colour. "But it is neither the shooting, nor that pretence of fishing, that makes this season and this place the best of my year. It is the fresh, brisk air--the beautiful hill and glen-the solitude of this wild scene; for why need a man shut out a bit of poetry when it runs against him?" Little thought our friend that his whole yarn rung in our ears like an idyl of the most genuine poetry. "Add to all that, the free life we lead at the shieling. Am not I right, that, after a day's shooting, a dinner in our shooting-jackets, with the deal table and the sanded floor for all splendour, with fresh-killed salmon, a leg of that dwarfy mutton, some grouse, a dish of potatoes bursting their brown jackets, for viands, all dressed by Mrs. M'Bean and her neat-handed Phyllis, with the permitted pipe, and the tumbler of four-yearold Brackla after, is far above the most careful feast at the 'Trois frères,' or even under the hospitable roof of the Père Philippe !' I really don't know why we leave this place so soon as we do. I suppose the weather gets disagreeable to some of the party. For my part, I don't dislike the rough weather of autumn; the fire of peats, with a topping of birch billets, makes a good addition to our evening enjoyments; and for sport, it gets better to the last. Grouse-shooting in the end of September and October is much finer and more exciting sport than the first of the season. A dozen brace then are worth having, and take some skill and patience to bag them, very different from the unfledged chickens of the 12th. But, like everything else that is good, this life comes to an end, and next week we are to have our two days' final driving of the wood in the glen for vermin and roe and fox. It seems against nature with me to shoot a fox, but the farmer's joy when he sees one rolled over, and carries him home for skinning, reconciles one to the atrocious deed. Last of all, we have our day of the white hares; all the guns along the tops, and the school-children, with whom this is an annual holiday, scattered about the lower grounds to keep the hares moving, who move upwards and meet their fate. The boys have a brace of hares a-piece, and after that distribution there are more than the keepers and gillies can carry away. That is the last scene here, for which reason I mention it; but I have known it occasionally, when the snow was well-baked, and the air still and bright, a very pleasant, lively day. "The next scene of my life is in a midland county, among muddy turnip-fields, and covert sides. Partridge-shooting is the prose of gun sport. It is a pity the season for it and the grouse-time could not be reversed. One might enjoy English shooting before a day like this. But even a little partridgeshooting is amusing. The abundance of game is pleasant, coming after the wild season of grouse; the working of the highbred dogs with their English keeper is a beautiful thing; and as October brings rough weather as well as pheasant-shooting, the change from this stormy hill-side and the sanded floor of our bothy, to the shelter and comfort of an English country-house and ladies' society, is not an unmitigated evil. "A very small change takes me on from the partridge ground to the kennels and the fox-hounds again, and so I have gone round the dial of my year!" "Thus sang the swain: With eager thought warbling his Doric lay. Our friend, this noble sportsman, chose to measure and mark the circle of his year by the succession of his sports; but that was a fancy, like the shepherd's, who' marks the time of day by the little flowers that blow at certain hours. No one who bore him company in sport; no one who had the privilege of smoking a pipe with him after a day of cheerful exercise, could set him down as a mere hunting, shooting, fishing machine. There is a fund of pastoral feeling, of unconscious poetry, that underlies the character of every sportsman worthy of the name. Very different, to be sure, was the sportsman whom St. John has somewhere mentioned:-C.'s whole occupa tion was sport. He shot or fished, he said, every weekday, all daylight. "But what of Sunday?" asked St. John. "Oh! on winter Sundays I tie flies, and in summer there are the wasps to kill in the drawing-room windows." C. did live a long way from church. But cases like these are quite exceptional; and for the most part, be it well understood, it is not he who lives for sport alone that enjoys sport most; it is not the man who hunts six days out of seven, like "Tom Smith," that has most pleasure in fox-hunting. The man who really enjoys a run with the hounds is the tired merchant or student; the overworked lawyer, provided he can still sit a horse across country; the squire whose squireship brings duties and obligations that leave only a little time for sport. Let sportsmen, even of the higher class of mind, remember how St. John regretted being an idle man. Sport," however, is emphatically for the rich. Non cuivis homini contingit; few can afford Melton, or a deer-forest in Scotland. For this, among other reasons, we welcome another occupation of the rising generation. In our own time a pastime has come in which promises to be for our people what archery was of old. The Rifle requires a good eye, steady hand, nerve, coolness. To have these in perfection supposes vigorous health, the fine condition of the old athletæ. Intemperance is fatal to the rifle shot; even the minor intemperance of tobacco is injurious. These are circumstances which should make favour for this pastime as a pastime. But it has other advantages. We do not speak of its military and political effect at present. Rifle contests, like Cricket in England, like Curling in Scotland, mix all classes in friendly trial of skill, where skill alone wins. The gentleman learns to respect the yeoman who can beat him at the target. The tradesman who is beaten bears no ill will to the gentleman whose better eye or nerve, perhaps his greater sobriety, gave him a higher score. even insinuates that he could have beaten the squire if it had not been for that confounded ale-house. We sincerely hope, on all accounts, that the "Rifle movement" may be general and permanent. He With all these inducements to rural pleasure, we are not afraid of our countrymen becoming too fond of sport,-making it too much their chief object of life, and roughening into Nimrods and "Tom Smiths." The pressure of business and of society is sufficient counterbalance; and with many natures indulgence begets satiety. We have said that our idea of an English country gentleman is somewhat different from that of the biographer of "Tom Smith." But setting aside our beau idéal, the usual average every-day English country gentle The English Country Gentleman. 37 man is something altogether different from the " Squire Westerns" and "Harkaways' Harkaways" of last century, and, we believe, equally different from the landed proprietor of any other country in the world, in habits and occupation. Look what he is and what he has to do. Our average country gentleman has been educated at a public school and a university, and has brought away some Latin and Greek, and a taste for literature as well as for the classical institutions of cricket and boating. His boyish sports gave him the manly tastes and habits of a sportsman, patient of fatigue, cold, and hunger. Now of middle age, he has duties which fill a great deal of his time. His family, his neighbours, the superintendence of his farm and his whole estate, claim his attention by turns. He is a magistrate (unpaid), and he does duty at Quarter Sessions. He must attend vestry and parish meetings, road meetings, and numerous boards for the local affairs of his district, especially the administration of the poor-law. Then he has some pursuits not of such rigorous duty, and some hobbies. From the general progress of the country he is much richer than his forefathers, who lived roughly on the same land; and with wealth comes luxury. He loves to adorn his place. He has a taste for gardening and such knowledge of art as education and travel give a man. The house of his forefathers a square ugly edifice of Queen Anne's time-is capable of improvement, and, bit by bit, he breaks it with gables and oriels, dormers, and garden stairs, into a nondescript but very picturesque mansion. The formal old garden. and orchard he has to change and diversify with shrubberies of evergreens and glades of green sward, without spoiling the spacious terrace, and the straight avenue of noble elms. Then there is the library to keep up. It is not like the one at Althorp, for our country gentleman is an average one, but it goes back a few generations, and has a sprinkling of Cavalier pamphlets, and a fair representation of the literature when Pope sang and Addison supplied the want of The Times and Saturday Review. It is a pleasant occupation for time and money to keep it up as it should be, and be assured it requires some judgment and accomplishment. The squire is no deep scholar, but he can correct his boys' exercises, and has even a weakness for Latin verses, and sometimes throws off such jingle as the following: "Rideant vernæ attonitusque pagus picking stones. spudding thistles. |