But even in Strype's day the joking had begun-witness Tom D'Urfey on the Lord Mayor's field-day : 'Once a-year into Essex a hunting they do go; To see 'em pass along O 'tis a most pretty show: Through Cheapside and Fenchurch-street and so to Aldgate-pump, Each man with 's spurs in 's horse's sides, and his backsword cross his rump. My Lord he takes a staff in hand to beat the bushes o'er; I must confess it was a work he ne'er had done before. A creature bounceth from a bush, which made them all to laugh; We like the Londoners-their joyous enthusiasm is like the hearty gaiety of a girl at her first ball, while the listlessness of many of what are called regular sportsmen resembles the inertness of the belle of many seasons. Colonel Cook, who hunted what may be called a cockney country-part of Essex-bears testimony to the excellence of their characters :— 'Should you happen to keep hounds,' says he, at no great distance from London, you will find many of the inhabitants of that capital (cockneys, if you please) good sportsmen, well mounted, and riding well to hounds they never interfere with the management of them in the field, contribute liberally to the expense, and pay their subscriptions regularly......Whenever I went to town I received the greatest kindness and hospitality from these gentlemen; capital dinners, and the choicest wines. We occasionally went the best pace over the mahogany, often ran the Portuguese a sharp burst, and whoo-whooped many a long-corked Frenchman !'+ Be it observed, there is a wide difference between the London sportsman and the London sporting-man. The former loves the country, and rushes eagerly at early dawn to enjoy a long day's diversion, while the latter is a street-lounging, leather-plating idiot, who feels quite unhappy' off the stones.' If railroads had effected no greater good, they had yet earned our eternal gratitude for diminishing, if not annihilating, that most disgusting of all disgusting animals, the would-be stage-coachman. Not that we object to gentlemen driving four-in-hand-if well, so much the better for their own necks-but we groan over those benighted youths who, while following the occupation, think it incumbent to descend to *Pills to purge Melancholy-1719. Observations on Fox-Hunting, p. 148. The derivation of cockney has gravelled our philologists. Meric Casaubon is clear for oixoyevns-not a bad bit of pedantry;but we have little doubt it is a diminutive of coke, i. e. cook; and from the same root probably are the French coquin and coquette: for the levities and vices of the townsfolk are all associated in the primitive rustic mind with the one overwhelming idea of devotion to delicate fare. Dr. Richardson's earliest example is from Chaucer's Reeve's Tule :— 6 And when this jape is tald another day, I shall be halden a daffe [fool] or a Cokenay.' the " the manners, the gestures, and the articulation of the 'regulars,' who touch their hats to ladies, and turn in their toes and jerk out an elbow to their male friends. There was a smart paper in a recent number of that justly popular miscellany, the New Sporting Magazine, wherein this Sporting Tiger' is well portrayed: The only possible mistake that may be made in judging of him by his skin may be in taking him for an opulent bookkeeper at a coach-office, or for an omnibus cad who has inherited largely. He usually wears a broadish-brimmed hat, furnished with a loop and string to secure it to his head in tempestuous weather, and a long-waisted dark coat, with a widish hem in lieu of a collar, and with astoundingly wideapart hind buttons, very loose and ample in the skirts; his neck. cloth is generally white, and tied so as to display as much of his poll as possible; his waistcoat is easy, long, and groomish in cut, whilst his trousers are close-fitting, short, and secured under a thick, round-toed, well-cleaned boot, by a long narrow strap. His great coat, wrapper, coatoon, pea-jacket, or whatever he may please to call it, is indescribably bepatched, bestitched, and hepocketed-constructed on the plan best calculated to afford extraordinary facilities for getting at halfpence to pay turnpikes with rapidity, and for withstanding unusual inclemency of weather in an exposed situation. He saunters about with a sort of jaunty swagger, twitching his head on one side about thrice in a minute; he carries a slight switch in his hand, with which he deliberately rehearses, as he strolls along, the outline of a severe double-thonging with which he means to surprise his team-when he sets up one. What appears to interest him above all things in this sublunary scene are the family affairs of stage-coachmen, and the success or failure of the coaches committed to their charge. He would rather be accosted familiarly before witnesses by Brighton Bill than by the Duke of Wellington." Such figures as this used to be very familiar to all who saw the arrival or departure of The Age' or The Times;' but they are now rare. There survives, however, another and a still lower grade of London sporting-men-lower in rank-lower in everything-who tend materially to bring the fair fame of our citizens into disrepute. We allude to the steeple-chase and hurdle-race riders. We denounce the whole system. It is bad in every point of view-cruel, dangerous, and useless-cruel to horses, dangerous to riders, and useless in all its results-except, indeed, the frequent riddance it makes of fools. What can be more cruel than rewarding a noble animal who has carried his rider gallantly throughout the winter, when his legs want rest and refreshment, by a butchering race across country, without the wonted stimulus in the cry of hounds-and all for a few sovereigns sweepstake? What can be more dangerous than the pranks of a set of hotheaded youths, roused perhaps with the false courage of brandy, setting off to gallop straight across an artificially-fenced country, against captains who don their titles with their jackets, and retire after after the race into the privacy of grooms or stable-men? If it is the speed of the horse that the owner wishes to ascertain, the smooth race-course is the place for that; and as to saying that hunters must be able to go the pace,' we answer, that hounds must go even faster than they do to require the pace that steeplechases are ridden at. Every day sees the hunting countries becoming more enclosed; and it is supposing that the hedges are no impediment to the fox and hounds to say it is necessary to ride a horse 6 full tilt,' and at score' while they are running. No doubt there are bursts, but there are few without some breathing time and at any rate the excitement of the hounds lends an impetus to the horse, which the spur of the steeple-chaser can never supply. An amusing book might be written on the genuine sportsmen' of this our great city; and we heartily wish Mr. Surtees of Hemsterly Hall, Northumberland, to whom we are indebted for the volumes named at the head of this paper, would undertake the job. We believe the Epping Hunt was taken up after the downfall of the city pack by Tom Rounding and his brother Dick. Dick died in 1813, leaving Tom, who, though now, alas! dead too, will never die in the annals of the chase. He has been celebrated by Hood-but the greatest compliment perhaps that could be paid him was that the Epping Hunt died with him. Happy we are to think that with our editorial ubiquity we once joined the Epping Hunt. Though somewhat shorn of its glory-still Tom Rounding was there the living likeness of George III.-the courteous host of the Horse and Groom at Woodford Wells; 'A snow-white head, a merry eye, A cheek of jolly blush, A claret tint laid on by Health With Master Reynard's brush!' We know not if Tom Rounding felt the contempt that most old fox-hunters do for stag-hunting-but certainly, the day we had the honour of attending, there was not much energy in the out-ofdoors department. A stupid-looking hind, its head garnished with dingy ribbons, was uncarted before a dozen yelping unsizeable hounds, whom no exertions or persuasions of a blowsy whipper-in clad in green, with the peak of his cap turned behind to conduct the rain down his back, could induce to pack together; and after a circuitous struggle of a mile or so, hind, hounds, and horsemen found themselves at the back of the Horse and Groom-with the real business of the day yet to commence. But Surrey was the great scene of action. Ten years ago, in that county, there were three packs of fox-hounds, one of staghounds, VOL. LXXI. NO. CXLII. 2 E hounds, and innumerable packs of harriers. When Mr. Jorrocks, whose exploits we are now approaching, wanted to astonish his friend the Yorkshireman with the brilliancy of Surrey doings, and mounted him for a day with them 'ounds,' they overtook near Croydon a gentleman reading a long list decorated with a staghunt at the top, choosing which pack he should go to, just as one reads the play-bills during a Temperance Corner' dinner, to see which theatre is best worth patronising. of We cannot allude to those days without giving a word to the late Parson Harvey of Pimlico,' as he was generally called. Many of our readers will remember a tall, eccentric, horsebreaker-looking individual, dressed in an old black coat, with drab breeches and gaiters, lounging up and down the Park on a thorough-bred and frequently hooded horse: that was the Rev. Mr. Harvey, an enthusiastic lover of the animal, and the owner many valuable horses. He was an amiable, inoffensive man, and an oracle in horse-flesh, particularly where racing matters were concerned. His last appearance in public was on Newmarket Heath, whither he was drawn in a bed-carriage, his feeble head propped up with pillows, to see the produce of some favourite win his race. But let it not be supposed that Mr. Harvey had no regard for religious duties: far from it. Though without preferment, and long before the Tracts were heard of, he was a daily attendant at Church: morning-service at Westminster Abbey invariably included him among its congregation. His style of doing this, however, had something of peculiarity about it. Disdaining to walk, and being, moreover, an economist, he hit upon an expedient for providing shelter for his horse without the expense of a livery-stable. His long equestrian exercises wearing out much iron, he always rode that horse to the Abbey which most wanted shoeing, and so got standing room at a neighbouring smithy; but as a set of shoes a-day would more than supply his stud, the worthy parson had only one shoe put on at a time, so that each horse got four turns! Mr. Daniel (in his Rural Sports') relates a singular instance of London keenness and management, which may be placed in contrast with the extravagance of modern establishments: 'Mr. Osbaldeston, clerk to an attorney [a connexion, no doubt, of the modern "squire"] supported himself, with half-a-dozen children, as many couple of hounds, and two hunters, upon sixty pounds per annum. This also was effected in London, without running in debt, and with always a good coat on his back. To explain this seeming impossibility, it should be observed that, after the expiration of officehours, Mr. Osbaldeston acted as an accountant for the butchers in Clare-market, who paid him in offal. The choicest morsels of this he selected for himself and family, and with the rest he fed his hounds, which were kept in the garret. His horses were lodged in his cellar, and fed on grains from a neighbouring brewhouse, and on damaged corn, with which he was supplied by a cornchandler, whose books he kept in order. Once or twice a week in the season he hunted; and by giving a hare now and then to the farmers over whose ground he sported, he secured their good will and permission; and several gentlemen (struck with the extraordinary economical mode of his hunting arrangements, which were generally known) winked at his going over their manors. Mr. Osbaldeston was the younger son of a gentleman of good family but small fortune in the north of England; and, having imprudently married one of his father's servants, was turned out of doors, with no other fortune than a southern hound big with pup, and whose offspring from that time became a source of amusement to him.' We have already alluded to one change that railroads have effected in the sporting department of London life; but that was a trifle. All England has been contracted, as it were, within the span of our metropolis. Sportsmen who rose by candlelight, and with difficulty accomplished a Croydon or Barnet meet by eleven, can now start, horse and all, by the early train, and take the cream of Leicestershire for their day! The Yorkshire hills resound to the guns that formerly alarmed only Hampstead and Highgate; and the lazy Lea is deserted for the rushing Tweed or sparkling Teviot. No wonder, therefore, that we should now find our old friend Mr. Jorrocks on a new and comparatively distant field of action. Many hasty critics accused the author of Jorrocks's Jaunts and Jollities (1838) of plagiarizing Pickwick and Co., regardless of the preface, which stated that the chapters were reprinted from the New Sporting Magazine, wherein they had appeared between the years 1831 and 1834,' long before Mr. Dickens emerged into public notice. We will venture to say that the sire of Jorrocks would no more think of such a thing as filching another man's style than would the more prolific Boz.' How far the popularity of The Jaunts' may have induced certain publishers to wish for a Cockney sportsman of their own is another matter: but the dialect of Jorrocks was and is his own; and we must equally disclaim, on the part of our independent friend, as respects character, all clanship or sympathy with the soft Mr. Pickwick. Jorrocks is a sportsman to the backbone. Pickwick's real merits are many and great; but thorough ignorance of all appertaining to sporting was his prime qualification for the chairmanship of the club-a true cockney according to Skinner's definition, Vir urbanus, rerum rusticarum prorsus ignarus;' nor need Hickes's addition be omitted, ‘Gulæ et ventri deditus.' In these volumes the character of the sporting grocer is brought |