gins and snares for body and soul, for everything that is, or was, or is to be, from the hands or brains of the labourer; only refinement puts the name of virtues upon vices, in order to run the greater riot of luxury." Quoth Leatherlungs, "Your diatribe is as severe as my own; and as true. Go down a step or two in rank, and you'll find it almost as bad. You see in the journals all the queer contrivances by which paupers obtain money on false pretences. A gang of 'em, t'other day, by means of a surreptitious order, got out of a draper's shop ever so many pounds'-worth of silks and satin. The men were taken up before the magistrate, and got committed-their desert. I was thinking of the circumstance as I lounged over the counter of a haberdasher's, to whom a friend of mine is chief clerk. A fine customer comes in out of an emblazoned coach: the master attends, himself. Some fine tissues of silk were displayed, and one was chosen and paid for, and the young gay lady departed. That customer,' quoth my friend aside to me, chose the cheapest of the fabrics, and paid the price of the highest. Our governor is no green-'un, and knows when to lay on thickly. He doesn't make above a hundred per cent. upon that bargain!' This, too, was obtaining money on false pretences, only it was not an actionable mode, you know, because another name could be found for it. It was all in the way of trade, that theft." "Why," said I, smiling at my stable-philosopher's earnestness, "in the case of a lady in a linen-shop 'Doubtless the pleasure is as great Of being cheated as to cheat: As lookers-on feel most delight, That least perceive a juggler's sleight.' "After all," said my companion, after a long pause, in which I was meditating my retreat from his discursive vein of remark," the hypocrisies of the present day have only changed their current. Anciently cant was absorbed by the monks, as I've heard. Now it runs through every channel and gutter of life. I doubt whether patricians have as fine a time of it now, preaching up the Poor Law, as the jolly fathers of old had in furthering faith and fasting, while they built palaces as refectories and organized colonies of cooks." "You may well make it a matter of doubt," said I, interested in the turn our conversation had taken; "that prince of epicures, who lived long enough to be fed with pap like a child, if I remember aright, gives a glorious description of the kitchen of a convent in Portugal. One, indeed, worthy the Vathek who surveyed it in 1794.' Through the centre of the immense and nobly-groined hall, not less than sixty feet in diameter, ran a brisk rivulet of the clearest water, containing every sort and size of the finest river fish. On one side loads of game and venison were heaped up; on the other, vegetables and fruits in endless variety. Beyond a long line of stoves, extended a row of ovens; and close to them hillocks of wheaten flour, whiter than snow, rocks of sugar, jars of the purest oil, and pastry in vast abundance, which a numerous tribe of lay-brothers and their attendants were rolling out, and puffing up into a hundred different shapes, singing all the while as blithely as larks in a corn-field.' It were a matter of pardonable curiosity to inquire whether the royal kitchens were purveyed in as regal or Roman a spirit." "Well, that's not more stylish than one of us is doing it in the present day," exclaimed the Leg, with a look of considerable exultation. "There's -, who began life without a morsel of brass in the world (except what he had in his face), now hasn't a pot, or pan, or poker, a gridiron, a kettle, or a coal-scuttle in his kitchen that is not solid silver; and his parlours are as full of vertu (I didn't say, virtue) as paradise. Your friend Nimrod forgot, or didn't know that, to put it in his "Quarterly Review" slash at legging. And he overlooked the fact, that one of the gentlemen he did show up had not only as many horses as Xerxes, but as many wives as Blue Beard. Well, certainly, our Bob did go the entire animal, the total pig-he did. And why not; so long as he could afford it, or those that trusted him could? There's who straps in his father's stable, and overlooks the exercise lads; he gives fifty shillings a pound for his cigars, and smokes twenty between breakfast and dinner every day he rises out of his bed. They do say he blows two at a time, one at one side of his mouth and another at the other; but I can't answer for that. But this I can vouch for, that I have drunk port wine with luncheon at a jockey's, for which he paid eight and twenty shillings a bottle; and that wasn't so worser, considering!" These loose items of speech are to be understood as having been perpetrated as I made my way towards Tattersall's, by the quietest path I could find, seeing that Leatherlungs walk'd at me, so to describe our passage from the park towards Grosvenor-square. To say he went with me would be correct: to say he walk'd with me might do him mischief; for, although as scarlet a sample of impudence as ever blossomed in the "Ring," he does refrain from linking arms with his grace of B- or my lord of C—, which really, under all the circumstances, is no trifling instance of forbearance. You see him bandying news and jokes, and peradventure something more, with them, in all the familiarity of fellows well met; but should he encounter them where people unconnected with sporting do congregate, he "hangs on" while they discourse him, in a manner that has no parallel. If you can imagine a modest crab of the middle classes dancing attendance on an aristocrat of the testacous order, it will give some notion of it. Thus, at an angle of forty-five as it were, he bore me company to the corner of Grosvenor-place, and, as they say in the Footpads, "took close order" as we descended that Avernian declivity, the lane of odour, which conducts to Tattersall's. Being high season thereat, of course the market was well stocked. It was, as we have seen, the seventh day; and yet, probably, there wasn't a man in the whole assembly who went there for a purpose he would have volunteered to admit. Suppose the area at Tattersall's suddenly transformed into the palace of truth, some Sunday afternoon in the season! Wouldn't your first impulse be to inquire," What had become of all the earthquakes?" That's the owner of Lazy-cum-tithes: he has sent his glandered colt for peremptory sale, because the "vet" only engages his nose shall keep tight for forty-eight hours. That cabinet minister comes to lay against his Derby horse that broke down in his morning's trial. The Duke of Star and Garter does you the favour to say, he can lay against the favourite for the "Two Thousand"-his owner has just informed him his horse shall be kept for Ascot. Such is Tatt's. "Talk of horses and hounds, and of system of kennel! Give me Leicestershire nags, and the hounds of Old Meynell." There are two portraits of Mr. Meynell extant, one painted when he was a young man, by no less an artist than Sir Joshua Reynolds; the other, taken in his latter days, by Mr. Meynell's friend, the late Mr. Loraine Smith, of Enderby Hall in Leicestershire. Both these portraits are published. The first is drawn on stone by M. Gauci, and given in Colonel Cook's "Observations on Fox Hunting and the Management of Hounds :" the latter makes an admirable frontispiece to Mr. Delmè Radcliffe's volume, called "The Noble Science," and is a beautifully executed line-engraving by T. W. Archer. The portraits are as dissimilar as two pictures of the same man can possibly be. Colonel Cook's " young man" likeness is a kit-cat, representing a smart young fellow, with powder and pig-tail, dressed in the height of the then fashion, single-breasted, large-buttoned, white coat, lined with some dark colour, richly-laced waistcoat, and lace frilled shirt. The features are full, but this picture contains the model of what age would work into the likeness given by Mr. Delmè Radcliffe. Mr. Radcliffe's is the picture for a sportsman's money, and I do not hesitate to say, that such a portrait of such a man is fairly worth the price of the volume. It is a delightful picture, for it is just the sort of man that sportsmen of the present day would picture Mr. Meynell to have been. In addition to this, it is a sporting pictureeverything about it is sporting. The old gentleman is seated in his arm-chair, booted and spurred as he has come in from hunting, with his cap on the little round table (for hunting caps seem to have been worn then, 1794) and his huntsman, Jack Raven, appears at the door, accompanied by a hound called Glider. Against the wall of the room, which seems to be the master's "sanctum," is a picture of a horse. Mr. Meynell is here the venerable, white-headed, old man; he looks seventy, at least. He is bald, and his hair is swept to a point at the back of the head, but not made into a pigtail. His features are very fine, and there is a speaking expression in the picture. One can almost fancy what he is saying. The huntsman, Jack Raven, too, is good. Though they are dressed nearly alike, there is no mistaking which is the gentleman and which is the ser vant. Jack is an honest, bluff-looking, rather pot-bellied fellow, ween his waistcoat and breeches, as though up the leg The hound perhaps, is the only I should say it is rather leggy. The . kone regret that we have not more porthe chace. Mr. Matthews, the celebrated on of all the first-rate actors and actresses; acceptable as the winning horses of Ackerhas attempted a series of signal sportsmen. We have the great John Warde-great Both Mr. Meynell and he wear boot he weighed upwards of eighteen stone-on chair; both excellent; though I prefer Bar"Blue Ruin," with that neat hound, his honest face. John Warde was as great though in a different way. Meynell was Wide the natural, English gentleman. A look at w enough to make a man laugh; there seemed to be hovering about his lips. portraits. Mr. Osbaldeston has been given, wig and Sorting Magazine, though perhaps he would have himself without that appendage. There was an it of his first whip, poor Jack Stevens, given in the about twenty years before, in which Jack is represented horse, in first-rate style, over a five-barred gate. There Jure of Mr. George Treacher, on his white horse "Dun Sportsman's Repository," published in 1820, now rather a scarce work. It was painted by Marshall, and John Scott, two artists that will never be surpassed. Name of the whipper-in behind is very good, and characteristic His coat-laps reach nearly down to his spurs. her masters the country has had, "Mr. Parker and Worcesterwill always be associated. The New Sporting Magazine has had some good portraits in this line; the late Mr. Dalyell, for by the eminent Grant, who, unfortunately for grtsmen, seems to prefer painting the human form divine to the ble animal the horse. Mr. Dalyell's is a most spirited and original picture; not one of your woodeny, boobyfied, booted and breeched fellows, staring a Trojan horse out of countenance, but a dashing sportsman, galloping a slapping horse, and hat in hand cheering on a hound. Mr. Grant made quite a revolution in the sporting picture way, by blending action and scenery with portraiture. The Melton Breakfast, and the Queen's Stag Hounds, were wonderful pictures, and the likenesses most extraordinary. Not only were they extraordinary as likenesses, but the graceful, life-like ease was so well portrayed. Mr. Grant was pointed out for a great man by no less a judge than Sir Walter Scott. In Sir Walter's Journal, as published by Mr. Lockhart, he names Grant as having been staying at Abbotsford, and Sir Walter says he predicts he will be one of the eminent men of his day. Would that Sir Walter had lived to see the fulfilment of his prophecy. Mr. Grant, in my opinion, is quite the first man of the times. His portraits are not only good, but pleasing. They are satisfactory portraits. One feasts one's eyes upon them. His ladies are ladies. I do not know a more vexatious thing than a coarse, hard, vulgar, tea-boardey visage, staring at you from the wall-a thing you don't like putting into the garret or lumber room, because you paid ten guineas for it. Yet, I believe, there are few better trades than the real, daubing sign-painter. People like to have their features portrayed-to be handed down to posterity; and the novelty and approach-distant though it may be to a likeness, pleases as it progresses. One never goes into an inntown or country-without seeing the landlord, in his Sunday coat, generally brown, with a velvet collar, and the landlady in her Sunday cap and curls, gracing the parlour walls. These are bad enough; but when a dauber attempts a foxhunter, the effect is truly lamentable. I saw a picture in the Royal Academy once, that was enough to make one forswear foxhunting altogether; at all events, enough to make a prudent, non-foxhunting guardian determine to prevent his ward entering upon a sport of which the original of the picture was the prototype. Mr. Davis published some uncommonly good pictures of the men, horses, and hounds of different celebrated hunting establishments, in numbers, under the title of the " Hunter's Annual," which I regret has not been continued, as, independently of the merits of the compositions themselves, the literary department was well and sportingly executed. After pencil come pen and ink sketches. Sporting periodicals make us richer in these. There was a very good pen and ink sketch of Mr. Meynell, in the shape of an account of a run with his hounds, published in the Sporting Magazine in 1829, though the writer did not state when the run took place. It was in the writer's schoolboy days, it seems; for he was spending his Christmas holidays with some friends in Leicestershire, and the particular run happened to be on a new year's day. The writer says, which I make no doubt is very true, that every circumstance was as fresh, as vivid, as distinct when he wrote, as when he first told the particulars to a circle of envious and astonished schoolfellows. A first day, perhaps an only day, with such a man as Mr. Meynell, was well calculated to make a lasting impression on the fresh mind of youth-more so, considerably, than a day, however good, would do on a constant attendant with the hounds. It is the first impression that produces the lasting effect. "Early impressions," as Nimrod says, "will last a man's life, be it the three score years and ten, and another score added to them; that is to say, if they are stamped deeply." The writer says: "We met at Shoby Scoales; and never shall I forget my delight when that true specimen of the old English gentleman, Mr. Meynell, came up with his hounds. There was an air and manner about him which I have never seen equalled, and in all human probability never shall. His very seat had something so characteristic in it, that no one could see him on horseback without pronouncing him to be, what in |