IN LITERATURE 13 



sportsmen to boot. Among the most popular of his 

 successors in kindred fields, Scrope, Colquhoun, and 

 St. John, will naturally suggest themselves. No one of 

 the three falls very far short of him in ardent admira- 

 tion of nature, while the range of their several ex- 

 periences was infinitely broader and more exciting. 

 Nothing can be more exhilarating than the buoyant sea 

 air on the Sussex Downs, laden with the land-scents 

 from the thyme and the furze-blossom : nothing more 

 picturesque in the way of lowland landscape than the 

 deep woodland lanes worn out in the Selborne chalk, 

 or the lonely ponds in Woolmer and Alice Holt forests. 

 But what is life among them after all, with their tamer 

 partridge and wild-fowl shooting, to that of the sports- 

 man who has the run of the Scotch deer-forests or of 

 the broad waters of the Tweed or the Tay ? Scrope's 

 stories of his adventures in the forest of Atholl, where 

 he was made welcome year after year by the princely 

 hospitality of " the Duke," read with a flavour of 

 Cooper's Indian romances, although far grander scenery 

 is thrown in for a background. Pedantic he may be 

 occasionally ; and the formal dialogues with his pupil 

 which blend instruction with entertainment sound 

 somewhat like those of Sir Humphry Davy in " Sal- 

 monia," or chapters from " Sandford and Merton." 

 But there is not a taint of the oil of the study lamp 

 when he is really fired with the spirit of the sport. 

 When he describes the rough stalk and the deadly shot ; 

 the slipping of the deer-hounds on some wounded 

 animal, or the hart turned to bay under the waterfall 



