§34 Notes of the Month on [May, 
silenced in no other way, and in slaying men in general, we may be 
permitted to doubt whether any valuable national benefit is actually 
connected with the Red House exploits of the Osbaldiston and Ken- 
nedy generation. We allow the infinite merit of knocking out a 
pigeon’s eye at thirty yards, nineteen times out of twenty, or shooting 
a hundred and fifty of those little living marks before dinner; and yet, 
if the cut bono were proposed to us, we should find ourselves much at 
a loss. But all the Red House exploits are thrown into shade by a 
Chester champion, who is willing to back himself for any sum above 
300/. to kill with ball from an air gun, 1300 rooks in twelve successive 
days (Sunday omitted), he to name the day of starting, which he will 
do the mornirig he commences; the gentleman will put the whole of 
the money down at one meeting, and will meet either at Birmingham or 
Shrewsbury to stake. { 
This is incomparable; and will be the most exemplary piece of 
shooting on record, since shooting the centre arch of London Bridge is 
so nearly about to be expunged from the glories of the British name. 
The only point that strikes us as objectionable is the omission of Sun- 
day ; why should the laudable execution of the rookery be stopped by 
any of the old-woman prejudices as to keeping Sunday sacred? We 
are sorry to think that the bold spirit of this original rook slaughterer, 
this mighty shooter, should be still bowed by vulgar opinions ; and that 
he did not persevere in knocking down his regular hundred and odd 
on Sunday as well as on Monday, and so forth. We trust that the 
Methodists have not been insidiously at work in the case, and in- 
fluenced this active exterminator to blow the powder out of his pan, and 
let his barrel cool for twenty-four hours together. To the Methodists 
alone such an imputation can by possibility attach ; for the estab- 
lished parsons are too many of them excellent shots themselves, and 
hard goers over the country, to make it possible that they should think 
of interfering. No, while we see advowsons in every newspaper, “ in 
a first-rate sporting neighbourhood, with a right of shooting over 
twenty miles of manor, and six capital packs of fox-hounds within an 
easy distance,” far be it from us to suppose that the same sporting 
characters, who, however grave may be the colour of their cloth, have 
the true sportsman within them on every day of the week, should 
object to throwing the Sunday into the bargain. 
If we were inclined to encourage the practice of gaming by our high 
example, we should wager no trivial sum, that before fifty years there 
will be more tongues busy in talking English than in talking any other 
language in the world. The hearts of all the abbés, belles, savants, 
and lovers of “ la gloire” in Paris will be broken by the fact. But, not- 
withstanding such a catastrophe, the consummation will arrive. At this 
hour English is the language of settlements under every circle of longi- 
tude and latitude, which is not the exclusive dwelling of whales or 
white bears. And all those settlements are but the origin, the seedlings 
of empires: in them. men are not cramped by the sea shore at every 
half day’s journey. They cannot, as in England, leave one sea behind 
at breakfast time, reach the opposite side of the land, and take dinner on 
the shore of a second ocean. Nor, asin England, compass the breadth 
of the terra firma in twelve hours. They are mighty territories, 
opened to the research, the vigour, the ability, and the necessities of 
