CIVIL GROWL OF AX OLD SPORTSMAX. 49 



advantage of not being bothered with ramrods and all 

 that's enormous. But, confound it, sir, you don't want 

 to exterminate the partridge, do you ? and if so, why 

 not take and net 'em at once, and done with it In my 

 days, we treated the partridges with gentlemanly and 

 sportsmanlike consideration ; we did not shoot at 'em 

 over thirty yards, over which you sometimes kill, but 

 more often wound and maim a feathered sufferer, which 

 going away to some secret place pines and dies miser- 

 ably. Partridges then got up at a deliberate and 

 respectable distance from twelve to twenty yards rise, 

 and we had ample time while the flint was going off, to 

 pick our bird before he got out of distance. We never 

 used to talk of seventy yards then, because we never 

 shot at it. We kept our partridges for our sport, 

 pleasure, and healt^j, not simply for a morbid love of 

 killing. Confound you ! who would ever have thought 

 that you would have brought that infernal, unsportsman- 

 like French gimcrack of a word ' battue,' to bear on our 

 poor modest little partridge ? But so it is, more 's the 

 pity I Well, well ; the country's going to the devil 

 with all these new- fangled notions ; what between the 

 butchers on the one side, and the snivelling tub-thum- 

 pers crying out against the game laws, and all that, on 

 the other ; what wth the great ' I am,' the leading 

 journal, as you call it (small credit in leading folks who 

 liave left off judging for themselves), sneering at, and 

 running down every sport, from hunting to prize fight- 

 ing, and wanting to reduce the nation to a parcel of 

 cheating money grubbers, without one sentiment of fair- 

 play or manliness, in order that it may be the sooner 

 used up, — the country, I repeat, is going to the devil. 

 Hang me such journals, I say, in my day had any such 



E 



