UPLAND SHOOTING. 189 



of excitement — those are the ruder and less genial attributes 

 of his profession — but a lover of nature ] To his mere success 

 as a sportsman, I have already shown that a knowledge of the 

 haliits and instincts of animals is necessary ; and let a man once 

 snt liimseli" to study tlifsc, and he has turned already the first 

 pau(> of n ilural history; and so enticing is the study, that he 

 perlbrcc must persevere. And none can study natural history, 

 without loving nature. The true sportsman, the gentle sports- 

 man, must be in some sort a poet — not a jingler of rhymes, or a 

 cramper of English words into strange and uncongenial mea- 

 sures, a meter of syllables, and a counter of fingers, but a lover 

 of all things beautiful and wild — a meditator, a muser ! He 

 must be, as the old pastorals were, nijmpliarum fugientum ama- 

 tor ; and to the very farthest flight of their coy footsteps must 

 he follow them. Were it not for this, the sportsman were but 

 a mere skilful butcher, — out upon it ! there be better things 

 than this in our philosophy ! 



This it is, with the sense of freedom, the sense of power, of 

 manhood, of unchained and absolute volition, which we feel 

 when our foot is on the mountain sod, our lungs expanded by 

 the mountain air, that makes, in some sort, every man a sports- 

 man. 



And then the noonday repose beneath the canopy of some 

 dark hemlock, or tall pine, still vocal with the same fitful mur- 

 mur which pleasured in Arcadia the ears of old Theocritus — the 

 dainty morsel, rendered a thousand times more savory than 

 your city banquets, by the true Spartan sauce of hunger, the 

 cool draught tempered by waters cooller and clearer, though 

 perchance less full of inspiration, than the lymph of Hippocrene ; 

 the pleasant* converse on subjects manifold, over the mild fumes 

 of the composing cigar, — or, if need be, the camping out in the 

 wild woods, the plying of the axe to form the temporary shanty, 

 the kindling of the merry blaze, the rude yet appetizing cook- 

 ery, the buoyancy of soul caught from all these things, the un- 

 tutored jest, the untaught laughter; and, last not least, com- 

 posed on the fragrant hemlock tips, which strew the woodman's 



