506 OUR WOOD ENGRAVERS. 



consequently in the worst possible state ; but this ought not to have 

 been the case in the bringing out of so important a work of art. We 

 could have waited there was no hurry. He might have laid by 

 until the atmosphere suited his purpose ; until he could have 

 printed the work in such a style as to increase, rather than diminish, 

 his reputation. The sheets are so unevenly worked, that although 

 Nesbitt's lovely cut of The Hare and the Bramble, in our copy is beau- 

 tifully brought up, yet in several others that we have seen, it comes 

 worse than any other in the book. The back grounds of that clever 

 young artist, Smith who, by-the-bye, has established himself in the 

 foremost rank of his profession with unparalleled celerity are cruelly 

 smudged and begrimed ; while some of Tom Williams' cuts, than 

 whom no man offers greater facilities to the printer, present the ap- 

 pearance of a grouty and chaotic batter dim, dreary, dismal, and be- 

 devilled ! 



BRITISH SPORTS AND PASTIMES * 



THE humane, noble, and intelligent people of England have more 

 diversions tending to animal torture or destruction than any other 

 race within the bounds of civilization. They are beaten only in bru- 

 tality by the most barbarous of savage tribes. He who can hunt a 

 hare, as hares are hunted in this country, and subsequently have the 

 victim of his loathsome propensity served up to his table, is but one 

 remove from the New Zealander, who dines off an enemy that he 

 has killed by the slowest tortures savage ingenuity can devise. The 

 cannibal sometimes is known to put an end to the sufferings of his 

 human game by a benevolent blow on the head ; but our country 

 squire would as soon think of taking the Curtian leap as getting 

 a-head of his hounds, and, by an effective shot, terminating the 

 agonies of the poor hare, that, after what is termed a gallant run, 

 with blood-shot eyes, nearly blind, bedabbled with grime and the 

 death-sweat, totters, shrieking, towards the form from she was 

 started. The gallant British sportsman would deem this an offence 

 akin to sacrilege ; it would spoil sport, and be quite unsquirish. How 

 ridiculous must we appear in the eyes of foreigners ! We have a 

 Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to Animals, the officers appur- 

 tenant to which, get a clatter kicked up at the police-offices, if a 

 Smithfield drover hit a bullock some half dozen times over the 

 hocks, or a hackney coachman tool his team a little too tragically. 

 The delinquents on these occasions are very properly mulcted ; be- 

 cause, as the magistrates with much energy maintain, there is no oc- 

 casion for such barbarity. But why does the Society content itself 



The Field Book; or, Sports and Pastimes of the United Kingdom. London. 

 Effingham Wilson. 



The Young Cricketer's Tutor. By John Nyren. London. Effingham 

 Wilson. 



Sunday in London. Illustrated in Fourteen Cuts by George Cruikshank. 

 With a a Few Words by Friend of his. London. Effingham Wilson. 



