NOTES OF THE MONTH. 225 



COMFORTABLE CONVERTS. This is the ANTI SPORTING MAGAZINE, 

 and it delights us to find that our converts are on the increase. 

 They are all too persons of some consideration. Lately that fine 

 old Judge, Sir John Bay ley, came in a man worthy of being classed 

 with the best of the Magna Charta Barons. Our fresh recruits con- 

 sist of a few Members of Parliament Mr. G. Lamb, Mr. Hardy, 

 Mr. Hill, and others. In a debate on the Police Bill, when the 

 Quaker moved a clause for the suppression of dog-fights and bear- 

 baits within five miles of Temple Bar, they stood up like men, and 

 said that they could not agree to it, unless all similar sports pursued 

 by the rick all pastimes in which animals were put to pain for the 

 amusement of man (coronetted or cuffed,) such as angling, hare- 

 hunting, and fox-hunting, were also put down. This is gratifying. 

 The anglers, by-the-bye, are on our hook : we purpose playing them 

 presently. We shall make them smart for we, in the dark days of 

 our adolescence, were accomplished in angling, as well as famous in 

 fox-hunting. Few men have taken larger trout, or more formidable 

 timber but, in the very vigour of our life, we have seen the error of 

 our ways. A fox-hunter is a brute ; an angler, if in breeches, is 

 Belial if in petticoats, (( none but herself can be her parallel :" the 

 human imagination has conceived nothing with which she can be 

 likened. 



The clause of Mr. Pease was adopted ; but it is some consolation 

 to find, from the country papers, that game is still hawked about the 

 provincial towns, and that, from the operation of the late Act, it must 

 soon be exterminated. This is " a consolation most devoutly to be 

 wished." It would vastly dimmish the county rates (197 poachers 

 were imprisoned, in one county jail, during the past year) benefit 

 the farmers, and save hundreds from the gallows ! 



MORE GRIFFINS ! We learn from one of these choice sources of 

 select information, a fashionable newspaper, that the noble and inter- 

 esting shop-keepers at a late fancy fair for some bon ton charity, 

 " had each her family arms emblazoned over her separate boutique" 

 What a misfortune that these fair dealeresses and chapwomen should 

 not have adopted some more intelligible mode of exhibiting their 

 identity to the astonished gaze of their customers than through the 

 hieroglyphical medium of griffins and hobgoblins ! Why not write 

 their names as legibly as they can on the walls, or send for the chalker 

 from " WARRENS' 30 STRAND" to do it for them ? Surely such fair 

 faces and delicate fingers are but unaptly represented by boars' heads 

 and canine paws ! Apropos des bottes we find that his majesty has been 

 graciously pleased to appoint Mr. Somebody to the honourable office 

 of te Rouge Dragon" what is Rouge Dragon ? what possible ser- 

 vice can such a monster do the country ? Excepting Sir Henry Har- 

 dinge, we know of no knight sufficiently stalwart to encounter him,, 

 should he take to vomiting fire and brimstone. We shrewdly suspect 

 that the dragons of antiquity were no other than these of the present 

 day clothed in the invulnerable scales of place and sinecure de- 

 vouring more at a quarter's meal than would be sufficient for a score 



1M.M. No. 92. 2 G 



