him we did not want him to go in so deep as to be obliged to swim. By golly, then, me go for dollare ;" and in he walked, but had hardly reached water higher than his knees, when crash went the reeds, and the little fellow cut in towards our place of concealment at an astonishing pace, pursued by the alligator. The savage beast, as before, came right out on the bank, where we nailed him with two capital shots through the head that effectually checked his career. He struggled violently, but uselessly, to regain his congenial element, and, after two or three furious lashes of his ponderous tail, sullenly expired. The triumph of the boy was complete: had he, like another infant Hercules, strangled the alligator with his own hands, he could not have been more delighted: he yelled out, "Me so berry glad," tumbled head over heels, walked on his hands, and exhibited every symptom of nigger joy.

Doesn't Mr. Palliser frère think he might have got more fun out of this boy and alligator if he had put the former on a large hook, and, when the bait had been properly gorged, played the alligator in the water? It was a nasty and revolting habit which the Romans had, that of feeding their lampreys with fat slaves; it gives one ideas of cannibalism: but baiting with them -c'est différent.

We don't think our readers would be much amused by another, and not a new account of the prairie fires, for Cooper has twice used this picturesque fact of the western plains; but here is another story that Mr. Palliser heard

THE FIGHT OF THE BULLS.

About three months previous to my arrival at Fort Union, and in the height of the buffalo breeding_season, when their bulls are sometimes very fierce, Joe was taking the Fort-Union bull with a cart into a point on the river above the Fort, in order to draw home a load

of wood, which had been previously cut and piled ready for transportation the day before, when a very large old bison bull stood right in the cart track, pawing up the earth, and roaring, ready to dispute the passage with him. On a nearer approach, instead of flying at the sight of the man that accompanied the cart, the bison made a headlong charge. Joe had barely time to remove his bull's head-stall and escape up a tree, being utterly unable to assist his four-footed friend, whom he left to his own resources. Bison and bull, now in mortal combat, met midway with a shock that made the earth tremble. Our previously docile gentle animal suddenly became transformed into a furious beast, springing from side to side, whirling round as the buffalo attempted to take him in flank, alternately upsetting and righting the cart again, which he banged from side to side, and whirled about as if it had been a band-box. Joe, safe

out of harm's way, looked down from the tree at his champion's proceedings, at first deploring the apparent disadvantage he laboured under, from being harnessed to a cart; but when the fight had lasted long, and furious, and it was evident that both combatants had determined that one or other of them must fall, his eyes were opened to the value of the protection afforded by the harness, and especially by the thick strong shafts of the cart against

the short horns of the bison, who, although he bore him over and over again down on his haunches, could not wound him severely. On the other hand, the long sharp horns of the brave Fort-Union bull began to tell on the furrowed sides of his antagonist, until the final charge brought the bison, with a furious bound, dead under our hero's feet, whose long fine-drawn horn was deep driven into his adversary's heart. With a cheer that made the

woods ring again, down clambered Joe, and, while triumphantly caressing, also carefully examined his chivalrous companion, who, although bruised, blown, and covered with foam, had escaped uninjured.

Our author declares this story to be truly Homeric;-perhaps Virgilian would have been a more apposite adjective.

It seems to be not an unpleasant sensation to be tossed by a buffalo. This is Mr. Palliser's experience.

MR. PALLISSER AND THE BUFFALO.

The Indian then joined me, and said that the other two bulls had not gone far, but had taken different directions, so we agreed that he should pursue one, and I the other.

little way off on the open plain, but the skirting willows I soon came in sight of mine. He was standing a and brushwood afforded me cover within eighty yards of him, profiting by which I crept up, and, taking a deliberate aim, fired. The bull gave a convulsive start, moved off a little way, and turned his broadside again to me. I stir. I loaded and fired the third time, whereupon he fired again, over a hundred yards this time: he did not turned and faced me, as if about to shew fight. As I was loading for a fourth shot he tottered forward a step or

two, and I thought he was about to fall; so I waited for a little while, but as he did not come down I determined to go up and finish him. Walking up, therefore, to within thirty paces of him, till I could actually see his eyes rolling, I fired for the fourth time directly at the region of the heart, as I thought; but to my utter amazement up went his tail and down went his head, and with a speed that I thought him little capable of, he was upon me in a twinkling. I ran hard for it, but he rapidly overhauled me, and my situation was becoming any thing but pleasant. Thinking he might, like our bulls, shut the eyes in making a charge, I swerved suddenly to one side to escape the shock; but, to my horror, I failed in dodging him, for he bolted round quicker than I did; and affording me barely time to protect my stomach with the stock of my rifle, and to turn myself sideways as I sustained the charge, in the hopes of getting between his horns, he came plump upon me with a shock like an earthquake. My rifle stock was shivered to pieces by one horn, my clothes torn by the other; I flew into midair, scattering my prairie hens and rabbits, which had hitherto hung dangling by leathern thongs from my belt, in all directions; till landing at last, I fell, unhurt in the snow, and almost over me-fortunately not quite-rolled my infuriated antagonist, and subsided in a snow drift. I was luckily not the least injured, the force of the blow having been perfectly deadened by the enormous mass of fur, wool, and hair, that clothed his shaggy head-piece.

We must now re-cross the Atlantic and see what Mr. Boner is doing in Bavaria. He is telescope to his eye, perched in air, and sweeping up the Micsing, with his rifle on his back, his the mighty solitude in search of some dark speck that may be sign of the browsing chamois. Tis refreshing to leave the dark seething plain, with its stagnant pools instinct with hideous reptiles, and to breathe heaven's pure air upon the moun

tain tops.

Hark! the sharp crack of our hunter's rifle rings among the crags. Hit, but not dead. The wounded goat springs the chasm, and flees further off to die. We must follow

great nicety, in landing properly on the crag, and in stopping the instant your feet rested on it, in order not to go over the other side. This pinnacle of rock was very narrow, and all below sharp and pointed. Xavier, with his rifle well up behind his back, and the pole in his right hand, was over in a second, and stood as firm and upright on his lofty narrow footing as though he had but stepped I doubted whether I could manage the jump: the opposite side was where the danger lay; for if I made the leap with only a little too much impetus, I should not be able to stop myself, and over I must go.

across.

"Is there no other way, Xavier, of reaching where you now are, but by jumping over?"

"No," said he, examining the place, "you cannot cross except by jumping: it is not wide."

"No, but the other side-that's the thing: it is deep

down, is it not?"

Why yes, rather deep but come, you can do it." "I feel I cannot, so will not try," I replied, and began to look for some other way. The cleft itself, across which Xavier sprang, was only about twelve or fourteen feet deep: I was at the bottom of it, and while standing between the two rocks I thought I might manage to climb upwards, with my back against one wall and my feet or knees against the other, as a sweep passes up a perpendicular flue, to which this place had great resemblance. My heavy rifle inconvenienced me, but still I contrived to ascend. I was nearing the top of my chimney, when the chamois, seeing Xavier approach, leaped down into the chasm below, so that we both had our trouble for nothing. Coming down the chimney, it not being narrow enough, I found to be more difficult work than getting up.

The chamois was now some distance lower than ourselves before going after it, therefore, we looked for the slot of the one that had made off. The traces of blood on the rocks shewed it had taken a direction that led out of the clam. Higher up was a much worse place than where we had just been.

"It is very difficult to get out yonder," said Xavier. "The chamois has gone there, and has probably stolen away among the latschen."

Have you ever been out that way?" "Yes, once," he answered. "I was up here one day, so I thought I would see if there was a way out or not: 'tis a terrible place, I assure you."

There was a broad, slanting surface of crumbling rock where we now stood, like an immense table, one end of which was lifted very high. It seemed as if this must lead out of the clam, or at least to a good height up its side:

on this, therefore, I advanced cautiously. The slope did not end on the ground, but about twenty-five or thirty feet from it, and then fell abruptly to the jagged rocks below. The plane was so inclined that to walk there was hardly possible. Every now and then the brittle surface would crack off. However, difficult as it was, and in spite of a slip or two, I managed to proceed. At last I was obliged to go on all fours. Some minutes after, I began to slip backward. The stone crumbled away as it came in contact with my thickly nailed shoes, which I tried to dig into the rock, and thus stop my descent. I strove to seize on every little inequality, regardless of the sharp edges; but as my fingers, bent convulsively like talons, scraped the stone, it crumbled off as though it had been baked clay, tearing the skin like ribands from my fingers, and cutting into the flesh. Having let go my pole, I heard it slipping down behind me, its iron point clanging as it went; and then it flew over the ledge, bounding into the depth below: in a moment I must follow it, for with all my endeavours I was unable to stop myself. I knew the brink must be near, and expected each second to feel my feet in the air. Xavier, who by some means or other had got higher, looked round when he heard my stick rebounding from the rocks, and saw my position. To help was impossible-indeed he might himself slip, and in another moment come down upon me. He looked

and said nothing, awaiting the result of the next second in silence.

The Bavarian wilds are strictly preserved. Our hunters kill only bucks.

THE YEARLING.

We did not speak in a whisper, for the waters were filling the solitude with a voice louder than ours. "There is nothing here," I said, after looking for a minute up and down the ravine; when, just as I had spoken, from beneath a projecting part of the bank forth bounded a chamois, scared at hearing a sound suddenly jarring and breaking in upon the monotonous din that surrounded his loneliness. He leaped upon a high stone, quite unable to make out what sound it was that had intruded on the solitude. His fine ear had caught an unfamiliar tone; the loud equal hum that was in the air, and in the ground, and rolling on with the water, was suddenly interrupted; but what it was the creature did not know. He started and listened again, terrified as men are when the cause of alarm is unseen. He pre

sently observed us, and, springing down from his eminence, turned toward the steep on the opposite side. There he stood and gazed again, not more than fifty yards from me; but as it was only a yearling I let him pass. On he bounded, then looked back, and leisurely passed up among the trees to other haunts on the mountain-top, where his own footsteps pattering on the rock would be the only sound rising through the heavy silence, We are rewarded for our sportsmanlike forbearance.

THE BUCK.

left?" I asked: "it is there I expect he will come." "How far is it from here to yonder bare rock on the “A hundred and forty yards; not more I think, but quite as much certainly."

For a long, long time we waited, but in vain. At last Neuner proposed to return to the ridge whence we first saw the buck, and look if he was still there. After a while I saw him standing motionless on the crest of the mountain, and gazing steadily into the depth below. He made a sign that nothing more was to be seen. This was certainly not cheering, but I did not yet despond, and still believed the chamois was on the rock, and would eventually move into sight. But another half hour dragged by, and then another, and at last I reluctantly acknow

ledged to myself that I gave him up. But as Neuner still stood on high peering forth from his eyrie, I would not quit my station, incommodious as it was to stand between, and partly upon, the branches of the latschen. And though in my heart I had given up all hope now, my from behind the nearer one the head of a chamois appears eyes were still fixed on the further rock; when behold! -only the head-as he advances grazing. It was on the right. And now he lifts his head, and comes forward. His whole body is exposed. One second only, and the report of my rifle thunders through the mountains. He stops, would come first. It is terribly steep just there: he turns, and goes to the very spot where I expected he stands somewhat bent together, ready to descend the rock's precipitous side. But he is hesitating. He must be hit! The rifle is still at my shoulder, and the ball from the left barrel. "By Jove, it has hit him!" Down he comes; he can't stop himself; he rolls headlong over the crag! I watched him till he was out of sight, and then drew a long deep breath.

But there are more dangerous foes than timorous chamois on these peaks. The Yagers, or forest keepers, maintain a war à l'outrance against poachers, who carry a rifle for man as well as chamois. Mr. Boner says

In going along we met one of the keepers, who wished us good-day as he passed. My companion told me that a few years ago this man shot a poacher whom he met on the mountain, adding "The ball struck him in the very middle of his forehead." He spoke of the circumstance as though it were a target at which his comrade had aimed.

Incidents of this kind are very frequent in this volume.

Seven years ago, a keeper, whose game had suffered considerably from repeated depredations, and who had been unable, in spite of all his endeavours, to overtake the marauders, hit upon the following contrivance to work them injury. He knew that when they were out on the mountain they generally took shelter in a certain hut, where they made a fire and cooked their meal. He therefore procured a bomb, filled it with powder, and buried it in the hearth a little way below the surface. He hoped that by the time their schmarren was cooked, and the men were sitting round the fire enjoying its warmth, the glowing embers would have ignited the combustible mass and caused it to explode: cowering, as he knew they would be, round the blaze, he rightly judged the effects would be tremendous.

Mr. Boner having been shot at and hunted by a dozen of these poachers, has perhaps a right to hate them; but we are happy to say that the Yager's infernal machine did not explode. We confess to our misses.

"Does it shoot high?" I asked, sitting down and resting my left elbow on my knee to take a steadier aim. No, where you aim there the bullet strikes; but hold it a little forward, for the wind is now coming up from below."

"As I have it now, the ball would graze his breast," I said, about to fire.

"That's right: you will hit him in the middle of the shoulder."

Bang went the rifle. "He has got the ball for certain no shot could go off better."

:

"You have not touched him," said Xavier, who had been watching the result through his glass: "the ball passed just before his shoulder: I saw it strike the bank behind him."

"Confound it, that 's the effect of allowing for the wind! But for that I must have hit in the best place. Nothing on earth can fire truer than your rifle."

"Yes, I know it; but being so far, and as the wind is coming up from the valley, I thought it safer to make an allowance for the draught.'

There was no use in being irritated.

Mr. Boner's is a pleasant book upon a subject not much hackneyed. Every one who has passed a week at Interlachen-and what cockney has not?-has listened to stories of chamois shooting. shooting. Every one who has walked the Tyrol and scaled the Tümbler Yoch has been piloted by a guide with a chamois tail in his сар. But few tourists can lay their hands very upon their breast pockets, and say with a clear conscience that they have seen a real, wild, live, chamois, and very, very few English sportsmen can truly boast that they have killed one. Palliser's American adventures are neither so new, so fresh, nor so interesting, as those of his dearly-beloved brother sportsman of Bavaria ; but both these volumes are good wholesome reading.

Mr.

THESE two additional volumes consist of the Poet's diary from August 1819 to the end of October 1825.

At the rate at which the work progresses it appears calculated to provide all the diners out of the present and the next generation with constant supplies of bon mots, anecdotes, and light table-talk; and when, in some distant era, and perhaps under the auspices of a grandson of the present editor, the last sheet shall roll from the press, the whole may be bound up as a vast encyclopædia of jests-a universal repertorium, in which nothing in Joe Miller is omitted, and every thing since discovered has been added.

In Boswell's "Life of Johnson" the most unpopular personage with the reader is undoubtedly the author of the book. In Moore's journal Moore himself threatens to become, at the end of, say the fortieth volume, a confirmed bore. It already requires a constant struggle to keep up a sentiment of respect for a man who is unceasingly obtruding upon us his little weaknesses. When the poet repeats to us every compliment that was ever paid to him by a person of quality*; chronicles every night the plaudits that attended upon his songs; openly rejoices in an affectionate phrase in a dedication from Lord John-not because it was the warm expression of a man worthy of his friendship, but because it was "from a Russell+;"-indignantly denounces an unlucky person who had dared to open his mouth when Moore was singing; records how constantly he was so "locked, barred, and bolted by dinner engagements that he had not a day to give to a duchess; and when all this is told, retold, repeated, and re-repeated, we confess that, decies repetita, it does not please. We become conscious of a chronic state of vexation that so very great a poet will take such enormous pains to work into us the conviction that he was a very little man. We could readily forgive him the fact of having had his head turned by the praises of all the fine folks whom he amused, but we cannot so well get over the entire absence of moral dignity be

Here is one example from a thousand-"Lady H. read me a letter from Lord William Russell at Spa, in which he mentions that the Grand Duchess of Russia is there, and that she always carries about with her two copies of Lalla Rookh,' most splendidly bound, and studded with precious stones, one of which he had seen."

"Found a copy of Lord John's book, just arrived by the ambassador's courier from Longman's. He calls himself in the dedication my attached friend.' This tribute from a Russell gives me great pleasure." Vol. 3. p. 173.

Lord John Russell would seem to be somewhat of our opinion in this matter. To free the journal of sinall vanities he must have expunged all the matter personal to the poet, for it is the colouring matter of the fabric. He stands by, therefore, silent, and apparently indifferent; interjects no remark, even when his author is more than usually vain-glorious about a compliment from a countess, or such a foolish phrase from Rogers as "What a lucky fellow you are! Surely you must have been born with a rose in your lips and a nightingale singing on the top of your bed." Even when Moore intimates that it is "rather a fault" in Lord John that he does not know his own mind the poet being resentful at Lord John having put off an engagement to go with him to England; even when he adds, "My chief regret at it is, the not having his assistance in my negociation with the American agent;" even where, through a diary of eight days, and three pages, he exhibits Lord John in an almost ludicrous state of uncertainty; the editor does not condescend to make one remark, or to cut out one word. Lord John seems to have made it a point of conscience to let the poet go to posterity according to his own fancy, and to interfere only to change a name into an initial letter, or to defend some intimate friend-as in the case of Lord Althorpe and the Duc de Broglie -from an unjust aspersion.

In substituting initials, or even blanks, for names, Lord John has not always very successfully concealed the individual. For instance, Moore has just told us that Croker had arrived in Paris, and that he had met him with Theodore Hook: the name in that announcement is printed in full. A few days later we read the following, which we shall not hesitate to call

MOORE'S OPINION OF CROker. Met, who walked about with me, and made me I have take a family dinner with him at his hotel. not seen so much of him since we were in college together, and I find that his vanity is even greater than has been reported to me, and his display of cleverness far less than I expected. He is undoubtedly a good partisan, a quick skirmisher in reviews and newspapers, and a sort of servant-of-all-work for his employers, but as to any thing of the higher order of talent, I am greatly mistaken if he has the slighest claim to it.

Four days later he writes

was at 's at five to dinner. His conversation to-day less ostentatious and much more sensible. He says he wrote his article on the Elgin Marbles for the Quarterly" in one morning.

66

Some time after, Moore asked Croker to reᏃ

view his "Lives of the Angels" in the Quarterly, but the latter very prudently declined.

A propos of Croker, we have one of the very few bon mots recorded of Sir Robert Peel.

Lord Strangford mentioned that on some one saying to Peel, about Lawrence's picture of Croker, "You can see the very quiver of his lips," "Yes," said Peel, "and the arrow coming out of it." Croker himself was telling this to one of his countrymen, who answered, "He meant Arrah! coming out of it."

Moore is not chary of his opinions of contemporaries. Perhaps Mr. J. W. Croker may be in some degree consoled that the poet should have thought him a mere party hack, with some cleverness but no high talent, when he reads what the same censor says of Mr. Wordsworth, whom he evidently thought a proser and a bore. To be sure, there is the danger that the world will agree with Moore in one case, although it may differ from him in the other.

WORDSWORTH.

Wordsworth came at half-past eight and stopped to breakfast. Talked a good deal. Spoke of Byron's plagiarisms from him: the whole third canto of "Childe Harold" founded on his style and sentiments. The feeling of natural objects which is there expressed not caught by B. from nature herself, but from him (Wordsworth), and spoiled in the transmission. "Tintern Abbey" the source of it all; from which same poem, too, the celebrated passage about solitude, in the first canto of " Childe Harold," is (he said) taken, with this difference, that what is naturally expressed by him has been worked by Byron into a laboured and antithetical sort of declamation.

Again, Wordsworth

Spoke of the very little real knowledge of poetry that existed now so few men had time to study. For instance, Mr. Canning. One could hardly select a cleverer man, and yet, what did Mr. Canning know of poetry? What time had he, in the busy political life he had led, to study Dante, Homer, &c., as they ought to be studied in order to arrive at the true principles of taste in works of genius? Mr. Fox, indeed, towards the latter part of his life, made leisure for himself, and took to improving his mind, and accordingly all his latter public displays bore a greater stamp of wisdom and good taste than his early ones. Mr. Burke alone was an exception to this description of public men; by far the greatest man of his age, not only abounding in knowledge himself, but feeding, in various directions, his most able contemporaries assisting Adam Smith in his "Political Economy," and Reynolds in his "Lectures on Painting."

Subsequently the diary says

We talked of Wordsworth's exceedingly high opinion of himself, as she mentioned that, one day, in a large party, Wordsworth, without any thing having been previously said that could lead to the subject, called out suddenly from the top of the table to the bottom, in his most epic tone, "Davy!" and on Davy's putting forth his head, in awful expectation of what was coming, said, "Do you know the reason why I published the White Dog' in quarto?" "No; what was it?" "To shew the world my own opinion of it."

Moore's estimate of Wordsworth is briefly jotted down in words better suited to a dandy

diner out than to a great poet.

Wordsworth rather dull. I see he is a man to hold forth; one who does not understand the give and take of conversation.

Surely it is better to remain satisfied with a

good book, and not to speculate as to what manner of man the author may be. Moore was a vain devotee of duchesses; Byron a jealous, uncertain, wild-beast sort of creature; Wordsworth was a bore-Respice rivales Divorum!

There are many of the smart sayings of Luttrel scattered about the volumes. Luttrel deserves to be remembered as a wit; for his flashes were not born of ill nature. The " body" mentioned in the first anecdote was, as Moore ought to have known, Lord Chancellor Shaftesbury.

LUTTREL

some

Luttrel, in good spirits and highly amusing, told of an Irishman, who, having jumped into the water to save a man from drowning, upon receiving sixpence from the person as a reward for the service, looked first at the sixpence, then at him, and at last exclaimed," By Jasus, I am over-paid for the job."

Kenn said of Luttrel's "Advice to Julia" "that it was too long, and not broad enough."

Luttrel said lately, with respect to the disaffection imputed to the army in England, "Gad, Sir, when the extinguisher takes fire it's an awkward business."

Moore was presented to Canning while in Paris, and at the express desire of the statesThere are very few sayings of Canning extant, and these volumes do not add greatly to the stock.

man.

CANNING.

Dined with Canning. Company, Lord and Lady Frederick Bentinck, Wordsworth, and the Secretary, young Chinnery. The day very agreeable. I felt myself excited in an unusual way, and talked (I sometimes feared) rather too much; but they seemed to like it, and to be amused. There was one circumstance which shewed a very pleasant sort of intelligence between the father and daughter. I told a story to Miss Canning, which the father was the only one who overheard, and it evidently struck them both as very comical. Canning said some very pleasant things, and in a very quiet, unobtrusive manner. Talking of Grattan, he said that, for the last two years, his public exhibitions were a complete failure, and that you saw all the mechanism of his oratory without its life. It was like lifting the flap of a barrel-organ and seeing the wheels. That this was unlucky, as it proved what an artificial style he had used.

Canning mentioned that Prince Paul of Wirtemberg, one day at Rothschild's, upon being frequently addressed as plain "Paul" by the Jew, said at last, casting his eyes towards the servant at his back, "Monsieur le Baron Rothschild, mon domestique se nomme Pierre."

Wrote a few lines. Dined at Canning's. Company, Sheridan, Lord C. Churchill, General Buchau, and one or two more. Not much from Canning. In talking of letters being charged by weight, he said that the Postoffice once refused to carry a letter of Sir J. Cox Hippesley's, "it was so dull."

have said. The point of the mot is lost as it "So long," or "so heavy," Canning must

now stands.

It may be much questioned whether these two men of genius ever understood each other. Canning would be exquisitely sensitive to all