is hard work. There is a wax-end smell pervades page after page that is not enticing, and a continued reference to shops and shopmen that half inclines one to believe that, though born a sportsman, you should be bred a mechanic to be perfect in the so-termed "gentle art." Without it is something more than usually urgent I never look at them. It is about as engrossing a pastime as reading Johnson's Dictionary, column for column, without having any particular word to find; or Pattison's Roads, without having any particular one to go; or Burke's Peerage, without having a lord to dine with, or Weatherby's Calendar, without a horse to run. Besides, I don't think a man can be taught the thing efficiently in this way; and so, if there should be a professor within range, I generally go to him.

Of course, after saying how little I study them, it naturally follows that I am going to quote a work on Angling-by the O'Gorman, a gentleman who wrote a couple of volumes two or three years since, in which he seemed to consider that there was no kind of fishing but one, and that one was salmon-fishing. I shall not attempt to dispute this, no more than I should the main matter of his solitary chapter on the pike. It opens well

"As I consider it perfectly meritorious to destroy these fierce and destructive animals in every practicable way except by nets, I purpose giving the result of my experience, though I cannot say it is a kind of fishing I like."

Exactly. It is proposed by the Epicurean, and seconded by the O'Gorman, that the pike should be destroyed in every practicable way, and that it is not a kind of fishing a man can care about. Carried unanimously.

Again says our friend

"The small trout, the salmon-fry, a small herring, the tail of an eel spangled and tinselled, are excellent" [bait, as well as the frog]; "so is a small-sized jack, and sometimes a good-sized one; so is a goldfinch, a swallow, or a yellow. hammer."

And so on with the "so is" ad infinitum. No doubt, if a man was to put on a horse's head, or a sheep's paunch, he would kill some extraordinary beast or another, that the local paper would bray about, and a set of semi-barbarians wash down with whiskey-and-water. is enough to make one ill to think of it.

Another word from the O'Gorman, and I have done

It

"The best time for catching these rapacious devils is the morning; and if hazy, with little wind, so much the better. I mean on the lakes: for pike-fising a river without a boat is slavish and disagreeable work."

Certainly, sir-carried again nem. con. The Epicurean says it is "hard labour"-the O'Gorman calls it "slavish work." I leave every man to take his choice, as I shouldn't wish to split hairs about such a truism.

When the Irishman was selling his horse, he allowed he had two little failings; and when he had sold him he explained what they were. In the first place, if ever he got away it was the most terrible job to catch him; and secondly, that if you did he really wasn't worth the trouble. With the editor's permission, I would recommend his pike-fishing subject on the same terms.

Seeks outlet in the ocean.

I lingered on

morn

To the post his winners bring; As when in Mundig's days ye were, Twin terrors to the Ring.

I sped my way towards Ebor, And viewed, before nightfall, "The Heath" at The skeleton of Blacklock,

Saw Surplice in his stride; And many a sheeted two-year-old, With "jockeys up," beside: 'Tis thus, thought I, right carelessly,

The heartless world glides on; For scarce I heard a single word,

Of their Master Spirit gone.

At Bishop Burton Hall: (3)
That symmetry and slashing size,
That large coarse head, I ween,
Have found their best reflection
In that Leger trump, The Queen.

To Walmgate Bar I hastened,

Slave to my wayward will,
And beheld the York turf Nestor,
Quite hale and hearty still;
Though well nigh ninety summers,

He can reckon 'mong the past,
God grant his health and happi-

(1) Conolly and Pavis are both buried at Newmarket.

(2) Frank Buckle is buried in the beautiful churchyard of Long Orton, near Peterborough, where he resided till his death, in February, 1832. Lord Strathavon's grounds are hard by his last resting-place.

(3) Blacklock was dug up some years after his death, and his skeleton is preserved to this day, at the hall here alluded to, near Beverley.

Then came the first St. Leger-
A race of five-'tis done;
And the shout arose that Single-
ton,

For Lord Rockingham had
won : (2)

As I looked for 1800, (3)

Betting spectres turned more
pale,

As Buckle, upon Champion,
Rode calmly back to scale.

Next, Singleton, on Orvile, (4)

Came past the chair alone; Then the D'Orsay, Colonel Mellish, (5)

Made the pallid fieldsmen groan: Near him, 'mid seedy touters,

Drawling out their lying tales, Unmindful of the growing hemp, hugged the

Dan Dawson 66
rails." (6)

Soothsayer and Octavian (7)
Were A.1. in their turn;

Then I heard a loud hoof clatter-
ing,

(1) In the year 1746, and for many years both previous and subsequent to it, "A Purse for Galloways, 9st. each, give and take; four mile heats," formed a leading feature of the "true and correct list" of the day. The Doncaster races were then run on the Low Pasture, a large field on the opposite side of the Great North Road to the present race-course, and sometimes (vide cards)" before dinner."

(2) In 1776, "Lord Rockingham's br. f. Albacwlia, by Sampson; John Singleton," won the stakes which, in 1778, first received the name of the St. Leger Stakes. Champion won the Derby and Leger, in 1800.

1802-Orvile won in a canter.

1804-Colonel Mellish won with Sancho, the first favourite.

(6) Dan Dawson was hung at Cambridge, August 8th, 1812. He was one of the most illiterate of the touting fraternity; and, amongst many others, destroyed two blood mares, at Doncaster, by mixing solutions of arsenic with their water.

(7) Octavian won the Leger in 1810; Soothsayer the following year.