98 WARWICK WOODLANDS. 



game-bag, I began the other night. If you were not as lazy 

 as possible, friend Frank, you would bring your fly-book out, 

 when the light comes, and tie some hackles." 



" Perhaps I may, when the light comes," Forester answered ; 

 " but I'm in no hurry for it ; I like of all things to look out, 

 and watch the changes of the night over a landscape even less 

 beautiful than this. One half the pleasures of field sports to 

 me, is other than the mere excitement. If there were nothing 

 but the eagerness of the pursuit, and the gratification of suc- 

 cessful vanity, fond as I am of shooting, I should, I believe, 

 have long since wearied of it ; but there are so many other 

 things connected with it the wandering among the loveliest 

 scenery the full enjoyment of the sweetest weather the learn- 

 ing the innumerable and all-wondrous attributes and instincts 

 of animated nature all these are what make up to me the 

 rapture I derive from woodcraft ! Why, such a scene as this 

 -a scene which how few, save the vagrant sportsman, or the 

 countryman who but rarely appreciates the picturesque, have 

 ever witnessed is enough, with the pure and tranquil thoughts 

 it calls up in the heart, to plead a trumpet-tongued apology, for 

 all the vanity, and uselessness, and cruelty, and what not, so 

 constantly alleged against our field sports." 



"Oh! yes," cried "Harry; " yes, indeed, Frank, I perfectly 

 agree with you. But all that last is mere humbughumbug, 

 too, of the lowest and most foolish order I never hear a man 

 droning about the cruelty of field sports, but I set him down, 

 on the spot, either as a hypocrite or a fool, and probably a glo- 

 rious union of the two. When man can exist without killing 

 myriads of animals with every breath of vital air he draws, with 

 every draught of water he imbibes, with every footstep he prints 

 upon the turf or gravel of his garden when he abstains from 

 every sort of animal food and, above all, when he abstains 

 from his great pursuit of torturing his fellow men then let 

 him prate, if he will, of sportsmen's cruelty. 



" For show me one trade, one profession, wherein one man's 

 success is not based upon another's failure ; all rivalry, all com- 

 petition, triumph and rapture to the winner, disgrace and an- 

 guish to the loser ! And then these fellows, fattened on widows' 

 tears and orphans' misery, preach you pure homilies about the 

 cruelty of taking life. But you are quite right about the com- 

 bination of pleasures the excitement, too, of quick motion 

 through the fresh air the sense of liberty amid wide plains, or 



