258 FRANK forester's FIELD SPORTS. 



r)rcmise of spring and the fullness of summer are both inferior 

 to ihe serene and calm decline of the woodland year. It leads 

 to death indeed ; but it seems to me rather to resemble the 

 tranquil and gentle close of a well-spent life, beautified by the 

 consciousness of good deeds done during the heat of youth, and 

 in the heyday of manhood, and enriched by the hope of glories 

 to shine forth after the winter of the grave, than the termination 

 of an existence to be dreaded or deplored. 



Every land has its own season of peculiar loveliness ; and if 

 the sweet sjoring-tide of soft and dewy England, with its JNIay 

 smile i and its April teirs and its rich breath of flowery fra- 

 grance, has awakened the fond sympathies of her landscape- 

 loving poets, the many-colored, purple-hazed, and silvery-skied 

 autumn of America has neither been unhonored nor unsung of 

 lyres worthy to hang aloft in high niches of the temjale conse- 

 crate to the noblest tongue of the modern universe. 



The true sportsman must ever be a lover of the charms of 

 rural scenery, and for this among other things 1 love and honor 

 sportsmanship. I do not believe that any genuine forester, be 

 his exterior as rough as the shell of the prickly chestnut, but 

 must have within his heart, though he may lack words to define 

 the sentiment, something of the painter's spirit, and the poet's 

 fire. The very nature of his pursuits must needs awaken 

 contemplation and induce thought, and I have often observed 

 that the spots to which he will conduct you, apparently with- 

 out a thought, except in reference to their convenience, 

 wherein to take your noonday meal, or your afternoon siesta, 

 will be the very places to charm the poet's fancy, or fix the 

 painter's eye. 



I think no lover of nature can be an unkindly, or, at the bottom, 

 an evil-minded or bad man. 



And so — and so ] Instead of pausing longer thus, or solidly 

 and solemnly discussing the theory of sporting matters, we will 

 at once walk into the practice. 



"We will suppose the time of the year such as our poor ballad- 

 monger above quoted has, perhaps, labored to depict, — the time 



