SHOOTING AS IT WAS, AND AS IT IS. 



tlircc or four of tliem, have black dogs miscalled 

 retrievers, with tight collars on, to Avhich a cord is 

 attached, on whose unhappy ribs the keepers keep 

 drumming with a sufficiently thick stick. Though 

 they have the poor dear dog in a line, they 

 perjDctually bid him to be ^^ steady" — the word 

 ^^ steady" to him, or ''keep back," either expres- 

 sion being superfluous, when the dogs are led. If 

 birds fall and the dogs are sent to pick up, all 

 the keepers whistle, as a bystander might suppose, 

 in imitation of the Italian Opera where heroes and 

 heroines sing loudest on the eve of death, and men 

 murder to harmonious strains, with some crotchets, 

 of course, but without a quaver of consternation. 



It is an extraordinary fact, but fact it is, that 

 those lords of manors who are most anxious to 

 show their friends a bloody day, — I will not call it 

 a good day's sport, though they go to an immense 

 expense to do so, in the preservation of game, 

 watching it, and feeding' it, — at the moment that 

 their wished-for success arrives, kick the whole 

 thing down by shouting to their men, and ordering 

 iialts in the line of march, giving different direc- 

 tions to boys with flags and followers, &c. 



The most fatal fact that militates against part- 



