10 WILLIAM SCROPE 



lairds ; Scrope's fastidious taste had often been wounded 

 by the habits of his associates ; and it is amusing to see 

 how tenderly he deals with topers, and how cautiously 

 he attempts to limit the deer-stalkers' libations and 

 prescribe a regimen for the forest 



' " O'Doherty, be merciful ; Christopher, put down thy 

 bristles ; for, lo, I will not limit him, as Sir Humphrey does 

 his fisherman, to the philosopher's half-pint of claret. . . . 

 The best part of a bottle of champagne may be allowed at 

 dinner; this is not only venial, but salutary. A few 

 tumblers of brandy and soda-water are greatly to be com- 

 mended, for they are cooling. Whisky cannot reasonably 

 be objected to, for it is an absolute necessary, and does not 

 come under the name of intemperance, but rather, as Dogberry 

 says, or ought to say, l it comes by nature ! ' Ginger-beer 

 I hold to be a dropsical, insufficient, and unmanly beverage ; 

 I pray you avoid it ; and as for your magnums and pottle- 

 deep potations, why, really, at this season of the year, as 

 Captain Bobadil says, 'We cannot extend thus far.'" 



Only to peruse such a prescription makes degenerate 

 modern temples throb. Fancy taking the hill to any 

 purpose the morning after a bottle of champagne and 

 ' a few tumblers ' of brandy and soda-water ; followed by 

 whisky ! 



Once get him upon the heather, and Scrope proves 

 a delightful companion. You breathe the very air 

 of the mountain ; you hear the bleat of the hill sheep, 

 the hum of the heather flies, the roar of the autumn 

 stag. You swelter in the blazing sun on the lee side of 

 the ascent ; you cower away from the wet blast under 

 the boulder-strewn crest ; you are led through all the 



