THE CHASSE IN PRUSSIA. 295 



the circles after each battue. Our camp presented a very 

 animated and picturesque scene the group of chasseurs 

 and beaters, the dogs ranged in couples, the guns piled up, 

 the game in heaps, the wagon for its conveyance, the 

 table/ &c., lighted up by the pale rays of the sun shining 

 through the dark branches of the pines, and causing the 

 white surface of the earth to sparkle like so many diamonds. 



Yery amusing in itself, our chasse was intermixed with 

 certain episodes which added something to our entertain- 

 ment. Amongst the party was a young Nimrod, very rich, 

 it was said, very noble, but which did not prevent his being 

 very green ! This is often, the case j and, if we are to believe 

 Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the great advantages the law of 

 entail possesses in England is, that it only makes one fool in, 

 a family. This living proof of the rash assertion of the 

 celebrated author of " Rasselas" had brought with him, for 

 the purpose of shooting hares, a pouch filled with large 

 buck-shot. He asked his next neighbour on the right, who 

 happened to be mine on the left, how many shot were suffi- 

 cient for a charge. This gentleman, trembling for his legs 

 at the sight of such bullets, answered laconically Sixty. 

 Immediately the young Baron commenced counting, with as 

 much religious exactitude as a monk would the grains of his 

 chaplet, sixty chevrotines, which he dropped, one after the 

 other, into the barrel of a gun, the calibre of which was not 

 as large as the circumference of my little finger, upon a very 

 small charge of powdeV. Upon our mutual neighbour re- 

 lating this circumstance to me, I advised him to be prepared 

 to perform double duty, or to fill up the gap that would be 

 occasioned by the bursting of the Baron's fowling-piece, 

 which, if it exploded, would be inevitable. 



At the risk of tiring my readers, I shall relate a battue of 

 a different description, to which I had the good fortune to 

 be invited shortly after the former one. 



