16 THE HUNTING-FIELD. 



sportsman : in his way, lie certainly is so. The 

 walking gentleman on the stage is an actor, but 

 not quite John Kemble or Talma. 



Angling is a sport ; and the illiberal cynic who 

 described it as a rod with a worm at one ex- 

 tremity and a fool at the other, exemplified his 

 own definition ; for the best, the wisest, and most 

 gifted have been anglers. There is not, in a 

 general way, certainly, much excitement in the 

 pursuit, and I should be apt to consider the man 

 who preferred it to robuster sports to be one with 

 little enthusiasm in his composition, probably a 

 very amiable and estimable man ; but my fox- 

 hunting predilections would never allow me to 

 consider such a man a sportsman, unless he was 

 one who angled when, from some cause or other, 

 he could not hunt. 



Shooting is unquestionably sporting ; and if a 

 man shot because or when he could not hunt, I 

 should par excellence call him a sportsman j but if 

 by choice he went pottering about with a brace 

 of pointers when he could enjoy the sight of five- 

 and-tv/enty couples of fox-hounds finding, and in 

 chase, I must say I should hold him somewhat 

 slow as a sportsman ; in fact, courtesy alone would 

 induce me to call him one. " The squire '^ shot, 

 it is true, and so do hundreds of our first-flight 

 men as fox-hnnters ; and whether it was a pigeon 

 or a partridge, Osbaldiston shot enthusiastically ; 



