ADVICE TO OLD SPORTSMEN 321 



of the fossil world, which latter as yet proves that but little of 

 the true history of the earliest state of the universe has been 

 handed down to man. 



In advising not only the rising generation of sportsmen I 

 would also counsel many of my seniors, to leave off the exciting 

 pursuit of animals on foot or on horseback when they feel their 

 nerves as well as their tempers failing them. Really, some men 

 of my acquaintance make the pursuit of pleasure, for they do 

 not get it, a trouble to themselves and a terror to their 

 dependants, as well as an uncomfortable scene to their friends 

 who happen to be with them. They ride or shoot in an irritable 

 frenzy, under which it is impossible for them to be happy, while 

 their horses and dogs, as well as their servants, are spurred, 

 whipped, and sworn at when a particle of the day's pastime 

 seems to go wrong, for it need not go wrong ; the semblance of 

 error is enough to establish in a nervous and irritable tempera- 

 ment, such as I describe, a temporary insanity. Horses' eyes 

 have been knocked out in these humours, dogs have been shot, 

 while curses and kicks were bestowed on their friends and 

 serving-men. If old gentlemen were wise when they arrived at 

 this impossible pitch for active pleasure, and had anything to 

 fall back upon, which some of them perhaps have not, they 

 would at once seek a quieter pursuit, or at least one wherein 

 nothing alive could suffer by the demon phase to which a long 

 and a spoiled life had brought them. Unless some of these 

 persons in the situation to which I am alluding do change, age 

 will at last take them out of their saddles and seat them in an 

 arm-chair, whence the link of their wilful lives will be for a time 

 continued by their casting such missiles as may be at hand at 

 their wives or their women, in an attempt to do mischief, until 

 they collapse from the over-exertion, and like the Grandfather 

 Smallweed of " Boz," lie inanimate until shaken up for another 

 attempt at abortive violence. 



Speaking of irritability on certain points, all men, the best 

 of men, are liable to that. A noble lord was once riding on 

 his shooting pony, with the gun on the pommel of the saddle, 



