Xlii PREFACE. 



ardent youth, who is beginning to look 

 with contempt upon his boyish employ- 

 ment among the hedges, and to feel within 

 himself the ambition of rising to the honour 

 of a flying shot, and of taking rank as a 

 sportsman in the open field, but by the 

 numerous band of more advanced preten- 

 sions, and familiar enough perhaps with 

 arms, but who are still grievously labour- 

 ing under some habitual awkwardness or 

 defect in the management of their wea- 

 pon ; the unperceived source of continual 

 blunder and disappointment. By the 

 whole of this irregular corps, the advan- 

 tages derivable from a due submission to 

 the rules here laid down, can not fail to 

 be still more immediately and importantly 

 felt, if they be not incurably lost in the 

 hopeless heresy of continuing to flounder 

 on in their own way, rather than by an 

 assiduous appeal to principle, to work out 

 a thorough reformation in themselves. 



In the further support of which prin- 

 ciple, as requiring " an actual submission 



