future. Repeat the process every day, and perhaps you may

effect a cure.

We have heard many stories of what dogs are capable of learning. But H. H. caps all that we have ever heard by the following anecdotes of Jet, the property of the schoolmaster at a village in Surrey where the narrator was living in the year 1861. The dog was not a sporting dog, and had only been taught tricks, as for instance carrying a penny to the baker's shop and buying a bun with it, and so forth. He also made a capable long-stop' at cricket.

'My first acquaintance with Jet was his begging of me one day in the street. I stopped and talked to him, and asked him what he wanted. He immediately started to the baker's shop, and sat up and begged at the door. I opened it, and asked the baker what the dog meant. On learning, I told him to come home with me, and I would give him a penny. This he did promptly, and trotted off highly pleased.

'Some days afterwards I saw him sitting up at the baker's door, with a penny in his mouth. Just before I opened the door for him I said, "Why do you not bring me your pence, old fellow, and I will give you some meat?" The dog hesitated when the door was opened, and looked down the street towards my house, but finally entered and bought his bun. The next morning I found him sitting at my doorstep, with a penny in his mouth, which he deposited at my feet, smiled graciously at me, and sat down patiently. I gave him the meat, but as I did not wish either to take the dog's money or to cheat the baker, I returned him the penny, which he would not take for some time, till I told him to take it to the Baker. He did so, but put it down in the shop and ran out without his bun, at least so the baker told me afterwards. After that Jet would sometimes come to me, and sometimes to the baker, with his money, I suppose just as he desired meat or bread.

'One morning I met him close to my gate; he had no money, but I asked him in, and he came and sat with me for an hour. As he was departing I said, "Come and dine with me to-night at seven o'clock sharp, and you shall have a good feed." I forgot all about the circumstance, and was sitting down to dinner with a friend who had dropped in, when there was a deep, prolonged howl at the gate. I never thought anything about my invitation, but went to see what was up. The moment I opened the gate the dog raced in, instead of his usual solemn stalk, and went straight into the dining-room. I had a chair placed for him, and a plate by my side, and he ate what I gave him in the most correct and gentlemanly manner, leaving soon after dinner was ended. Many times after that I asked him to dine. I never knew him to come without an invitation or fail to accept one, except once when he was long-stopping. He left his post suddenly, and begun to walk away, till he was sharply rated by his master, when he returned, but did his work in a very slack way afterwards.'

Spaniels,

Spaniels, of course, are not perfect till they have been taught to hunt the other side of the hedge. This is easily done with puppies; but nothing is so difficult with an old dog, who cannot bear to be separated by any obstacle from his master and the gun.

The most inviting description of shooting which H. H. has given us is drawn from his experience in Brittany; where it seems that, if you only go the right way to work, you can get any amount of good shooting-partridge, snipe, woodcock, wild fowl, and a sprinkling of hares. You must not offer the farmers money, but only brandy and tobacco, which, with abundance of politeness, will purchase their good-will at once. Nor is it well to offer them game, since if you kill game enough to enable you to give any away, you must, in their opinion, be sweeping the whole country clean. A few francs bestowed upon their children will be a good investment, but to offer it to Monsieur would be an insult. If, in addition to these expedients, you also ingratiate yourself with the priests and gendarmes, you may practically do what you like. It is also a good plan to shoot every now and then with the native sportsmen, who will only be too delighted to accompany you. They kill nothing, but they show you all the likeliest places, which you can afterwards go and beat by yourself. One reason why a Frenchman kills so little is that he won't allow himself enough powder. H. H. one day asked his Breton companion to allow him to load his gun for him, as he had been missing all day. He put in the proper charge of 3 drams of powder and 11 oz. of shot, and the next two birds fell dead. H. H. explained to him the cause of his previous failures and that he must use more powder. Ah! monsieur,' he exclaimed, 'il n'y'a pas de moyen, c'est trop cher.' He fired away pounds of powder with little or no result, because he would not use enough each time to enable him to kill. A more perfect and literal illustration of the penny-wise and pound-foolish proverb we never remember to have met with.

Our author's bag one day, when he shot very badly, was nine brace of birds, eight couple of snipe, two teal, a mallard, and a hare. He might easily have had double the number of birds, which he got well scattered; but even as it was, the day's sport makes one's mouth water.

We lay down this little volume with a feeling of gratitude to the author for the pleasure which he has afforded us, and the 'visions of long-departed joys' which he has conjured up before Before they fade, let us again record our conviction that there is no shooting like shooting over dogs. Perhaps we should add, when you can get it. The noble author, to whom we are indebted

us.

indebted for the chapters on grouse and partridge-shooting in the Badminton Library, is himself of this opinion; but considers that the only conditions, under which pointers and setters can be used to advantage, have so entirely disappeared from England, that the old style may be said to have become practically obsolete. We have already given our reasons for differing from him on this point. There is a great deal of wild, rough country still left in England, where not only is there plenty of room for dogs, but where you cannot do so well without them. And even on highly-cultivated land, if we except regular game farms, where there are nearly as many birds in a turnip field as there are turnips, we are at a loss to understand why dogs should be considered de trop by those sportsmen who shoot alone, or at most in couples.

Let us stand upon this gentle eminence on the 1st of September, and look down on the country below and on both sides of us. We are standing at the top of a long, narrow, sloping wheatstubble, where birds are certain to be found both in the early morning and the afternoon. To the left is a large field of beans, cut, but standing in shocks, with a good thick bottom under foot. To the right are some rough pastures. Below, the ground falls suddenly to a brook, which winds lazily through the willows, and beyond are meadows of the richest and freshest green, covered with the aftermath or eddish, and never touched by the foot of man or beast since the hay was carried. The grass is now halfway up to our knees, and birds will lie in it like stones. Beyond the meadows the ground rises again, and we see a twenty-acre field of swedes and white turnips, and to the left of it nearly as large a field of potatoes. Further away to the left, on the same hill, we see a great dark patch, which we know to be a big field of clover, not to be cut, at all events, for another week or perhaps fortnight; and below these again and nearer to us are more meadows, and a long, crooked hedgerow running parallel with the brook, low enough to shoot over, and a rare place, we may be sure, for dropping upon single birds. If we cross over to the brow of the opposite ridge we shall see much the same landscape spread out upon the other side. If we face round towards the spot where we originally stood, we have the little village on our right; the grey church tower just showing through the dark green elms; here and there a gable-ended farmhouse, with its yellow ricks visible among the apple-trees; the blue smoke rising up through the foliage; the waggons bringing home the last loads of wheat; altogether a home of ancient peace' with a homely beauty of its own, which touches the heart as well as the head, and is no bad

substitute

substitute for the sublimity of those wilder scenes of Nature through which other kinds of sport conduct us. Now, supposing such ground as we have described to have been moderately well preserved, why should not two guns and a brace of good dogs have capital sport over it? In the morning among the turnips and the clover; in the afternoon, when the covies have been broken, in the deep cool eddish and in the nooks and corners under the hedges; in the evening among the bean-shocks, full of a certain small beetle which the birds find delicious; they will lie almost to be trodden on, and will afford ample opportunity for either pointer, setter, or spaniel to make himself extremely useful, and bring into play all his highest intelligence.

Who will say that twenty brace of birds killed in this fashion by a couple of guns over such ground as this, is not as pretty a day's sport as any man need wish for? Yet such ground is not uncommon in any part of England even now; and we have often thought that the rage for driving which its votaries, or some at least among them, attribute to the want of cover, is due in great part to that passion for large shooting-parties and short days, which distinguish the junior breed of partridgeshooters. We readily admit that pointers and setters are quite out of place with a party of six or eight guns all blazing away in one field, and close together. But we much doubt whether any genuine sportsman would own, in his heart of hearts, that he really does prefer such shooting. If he does, he is not the man we took him for. For our part, when we look back a few years and remember the sport we have had among the beans and the clover, and the potatoes, and the meadows above described, with Duke, or with Bell, or with Marquis, or with Bruno, and hope to have again elsewhere, we willingly leave their big bags, and their large parties, and their thousand shots a day to the driving fraternity, and only long to find ourselves once more on the old spot, with the old dog, the old gun, and the old beater and game-carrier, once a poacher in Epping Forest, then a brewer's drayman in London, afterwards an agricultural labourer, but always an enthusiast, and almost as much a master of natural history as Richard Jefferies himself.

ART.

ART. VI.-The English Novel in the time of Shakespeare. By J. J. Jusserand. Translated from the French by Elizabeth Lee. Illustrated. London, 1890.

TALE is the first key to the heart of a child, the last voice

that penetrates the fastnesses of age. Even in the intermediate stages of life, grown-up men and women cannot always retain their roast beef stomachs,' or always digest solid information. For mental health, some changes in diet are required. Our forefathers had fewer indoor occupations than ourselves, and more enforced idleness; they saw less of society; they depended more on home resources for amusement. Hence the Pilgrim with his licensed exaggeration, the minstrel, and the whole army of jesters, japers, disours, jongleurs, gleemen, ribalds, and goliards,-all the tribe of those whom Piers Plowman calls Satan's children,' -were welcome in the baronial hall. Stories sung, recited, acted, or read, were their delight. Charlemagne, as we are told in The Lyf of the Noble and Crysten Prince Charles the Grete,' which Caxton printed in 1485, loved to hear read chronicles and other thynges contemplatyues, and, above all other books, the 'De Civitate Dei' of St. Augustine. When folks are festid and fed,' says the medieval romance of the Wars of Alexander the Great,' they would fain hear some 'lufe lay,' some tale of knighthood, feat of arms, or stories of the Saints. In the 19th century, the favourite relaxation is the novel. It threatens, like the rod of Aaron, to devour all rival forms of literature. Ethical treatises, political pamphlets, social dissertations, theological tracts, scarcely dare to venture abroad without some amatory accompaniment. Even Dr. Dryasdust plays the Troubadour. Apollo himself might sing unheeded from the Land's End to John o' Groats' House; but every door flies open to the modern novelist.

6

The demand for novels, and its supply, are the literary portents of the present century. The torrent of fiction, swollen by tributaries from every side, flings itself in ever-increasing volume into the ocean of print. In the course of its journey, the stream has travelled far from its original source. It has left behind it the knights-errant, and white palfreys, of chivalrous romance. It has emerged from those forests in which Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Little John, and Much the Miller's Son, ply their adventurous trade. It has passed beyond the borders of Arcadia, where princes and princesses masquerade as shepherds and shepherdesses, discoursing plaintive music upon oaten reeds. No Italian castles now stand upon its banks, echoing with the footsteps of bandits, monastic villains, clanking chains, or