CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



being madly fond of shooting — and your brother 

 Tom just as fooHsh about fishing — and cousin Jack 

 perfectly insane on fox-hunting — while the old gen- 

 tleman your father, in spite of wind and weather, 

 perennial gout, and annual apoplexy, goes a-coursing 

 of the white-hipped hare on the bleak Yorkshire 

 wolds — and uncle Ben, as if just escaped from Bed- 

 lam or St Luke's, with Dr Haslam at his heels, or 

 with a few hundred yards' start of Dr Warburton, is 

 seen galloping, in a Welsh wig and strange apparel, 

 in the rear of a pack of Lilliputian beagles, all bark- 

 ing as if they were as mad as their master, supposed to 

 be in chase of an invisible animal that keeps eternally 

 doubling in field and forest — "still hoped for, never 

 seen,"" and well christened by the name of Escape ? 



Phrenology sets the question for ever at rest. All 

 people have thirty-three faculties. Now there are but 

 twenty -four letters in the alphabet; yet how many 

 languages — some six thousand we believe, each of 

 which is susceptible of many dialects! No wonder, 

 then, that you might as well try to count all the 

 sands on the seashore as all the species of sportsmen. 



There is, therefore, nothing to prevent any man 

 with a large and sound development from excelling, 

 at once, in rat-catching and deer-stalking — from be- 

 ing, in short, a universal genius in sports and pas- 

 times. Heaven has made us such a man. 

 [3] 



