OLD STYLE OF SIIOOTIXG. 135 



the summer time, and help themselves pretty freely to 

 the gi'ain, and as they are large birds, trample down 

 much of the corn. 



I mentioned the other day to a keen sportsman, 

 who prefers the old fashioned style of shooting, the 

 great quantity killed on Lord Stamford's property, 

 on which he remarked, " You may go there with 

 a double-barrelled gun, shut your eyes, and fire off at 

 random, and you would be almost sure to bag a brace 

 of some sort of game." A gentleman, that I am most 

 intimate with, a shrewd, and particularly well-informed 

 man, observed to me, that he considered that the present 

 English nobility generally w^ere now their own land- 

 agents, and that the characteristic hospitality and 

 liberality which formerly distinguished this aristocratic 

 class, is not, in these times often found to exist. 



Noblemen and gentlemen of large fortunes now 

 sell their venison, their game, and their rabbits, and 

 some send the produce of their hothouses, such as 

 grapes, pine apples, melons, peaches, and other rare 

 fruit to Covent Garden and other markets; and it is 

 well known that a nobleman of immense fortune sends 

 in the summer time most of his common fruits and 

 vegetables to a fruiterer in a county towm. These 

 dealings were cei'tainly never practised formerly by men 

 of rank and fortune. Multa jyetentibus desunt multa. 



Many years ago I had some excellent shooting with a 

 gentleman in Oxfordshire ; the estate was small, chiefly 

 pasture land, with thick liedge-rows. The rabbits were 

 numerous, and our shooting was nearly confined to this 

 sport, as he had only one small cover near his house, in 

 which he had a few pet pheasants, held sacred, except 

 on the last day or two of pheasant shooting; but I 



