Squire's voice was loudest, burst from the whole field at sight of this grotesque apparition, whose approach was greeted by a loud cry of Yoicks, Tally-ho! and a signal was made to the huntsman to wind his horn, by way of completing the eclat of his reception. But old Chervil, who had no idea of a joke that interferred with serious business, shook his head, exclaiming-" No, not when we are just going to throw into cover; she may start away t'other side for the four ponds, and so get among the rush beds, and keep us dodging in the water all day. I've known them do it a hundred times."

By this time the Alderman had come up, mopping his chest, arms, and long cloth gaiters with his handkerchief, and having spread out his umbrella, he exclaimed, "Make it a rule to see every thing once in my life, Mr. Tasborough ;-never went a hunting afore ;-s'pose I shan't go now, for of course you won't go in the rain-no hackney coach to pop into-don't object to the country when the sun shines -but nothing like London in wet weather." "My good Sir," replied the Squire, "nothing could be more favourable-a beautiful drizzle, and just enough to make the scent lie-but you're warm."—“Ay, ay," cried Major Cunningham," he 'll be warmer by the time he's in at the death." 66 No, no, Major," resumed the Squire, speaking so as not to be overheard, "I'm safe enough there, for that pot-bellied pony will be blown in ten minutes, so I shall only lose fifty, and that's more than the old codger's worth, to take him as he sits, umbrella, clothes, pony, gaiters and all."

The object of these remarks now formed the centre of a gaping circle, the real knowing ones "twigging him properly," with a quiet sneer or a sly wink to direct one another's eyes to the various heresies of his appointment; while a few farmers assembled in a knot at a little distance, with their ragged ponies touching noses and dosing and nodding at one another, unanimously agreed that for "a gemman and a sportsman, it were all to nothing the rummest turn-out ever they zeed.” In a few minutes a breeze sprang up, the sun burst forth, the mist disappeared, and as fresh sportsmen rose up from the hollow behind the ridge of the common, and stood out in full relief against the blue sky, while their horses came neighing and pawing down the slope, there were numerous bets as to the identity of each individual; for a genuine son of the turf never loses the opportunity of a wager.

"Do you think she 'll make for the Downs ?" said the Squire, addressing a spare, elderly, half-dried huntsman, with a streaky patch of red upon either cheek, that gave him the appearance of a winter apple. "Lord love you, Sir, how can you dream of her running smack into the wind? No; she 'll either run upon a side, or go right down the wind towards Chippendale, or the water-mills. Spread yourselves wide, gentlemen, and don't beat the bushes where the water lies, but keep the dogs higher up, or we shall only have a measly hare that will keep us crossing all day in the puddles and plashes. But, harkye, there's a challenge-there's Lightfoot giving tongue who's never wrong--you had better mount, gentlemen, we shall have her out presently." And scarcely were the words uttered when out jumps a fine hare, and scampers away over Thorley Bottom-the huntsman winds his born, the whole field gives the view holla! the hounds come up, and the whole pack, as they burst away, set up a loud simultane

ous and sonorous cry, the cheerful melody of which is wafted by the wind over the startled plains, meads, and woodlands,

"While echo on high

Gives reply to the cry,

As if they were chasing a hare through the sky."

Unable to keep up with the speed of the first burst, the Alderman quitted the melée, cutting across the country in the direction of the dogs, and rejoining the hunt after a short amble, upon a newly ploughed field, where the whole party were "at fault." "It's this damned ploughed field where the scent has been lost," cried the Squire."Not it," replied the huntsman, pointing to some sheep stains-"this has done all the mischief-they spoil every thing-shouldn't wonder we didn't recover the scent all day. But pray be silent, gentlemen, keep together, and don't meet a hound in the face or you may turn him just when he's picking it up. I hear a halloo !"

"So do I," cried the Squire: "she's found, depend upon it."

Chervil's unerring eye reconnoitred, when he shook his head, and pointed with his whip to a boy hallooing the birds away from the seed. "There's another, did you hear it, Chervil ?"" Ay, ay, but it's up the wind, and she can't have doubled yet. But lookye yonder, Sir, d'ye see those sheep scudding away on the side of Penwick Hill? she's among 'em, I'll lay my life: the crows are all on the wing, and here comes a magpie chattering from the same field, we shall have the other presently; ay, I said so-she's there sure enough. But stop, that's Sweetlip's cry in the next field, and Lightfoot follows her and gives tongue-found! found! found!"

At this cheering notice the whole field gave a glad holla, and made a simultaneous charge after the dogs. The Alderman ambled towards a gap in one corner, when a well-known brewer of the neighbourhood, who, I am afraid, had a heavy interest in disabling him from being in at the death, galloped towards the spot on his powerful hunter, with the brutal design of upsetting the pony and its rider. The sagacious animal, however, bolted suddenly on one side, by which he would' infallibly have made a transfer of his rider, had the rider not appealed to the pummel and mane, when, accepting the omen of his pony's ears, which now pointed homewards, he quitted the hunt, and as cended a little eminence whence he again commanded a full view of the field. From this point he saw the poor hare, after having exhausted her starting speed, and left the dogs a long way behind her, make her first double, and return upon a different track towards the form from which she had been dislodged. At intervals she halted, as if considering what stratagems and subterfuges she should adopt, after which hasty counsel with her own sad thoughts, she would describe a complete labyrinth of turnings and windings, and again spring forward in a straight line. But the sure and relentless hounds tracked her through all her crossings and doublings, forced her from a sheepcot into which she had stolen for refuge, and the Alderman presently saw her limping sorely and painfully towards him, stopping to listen, then tottering a little further, and again stopping, while the beleaguering cry, fraught with a hundred deaths, grew nearer and louder, and poured down her large open ears, and seemed to madden her very brain. At this spectacle his bosom melted with compassion; and as the

poor animal, with a last convulsive effort, leaped upon a clipped quickset hedge close beneath him, and scrambled along its top to cheat her enemies of the scent, he hastily took out his purse, in the omnipotence of which he had great confidence, and offered five pounds to any one that would save her. But it was too late; the ravening dogs rushed in upon their prey as she tumbled from the hedge, and a short piteous shriek, that went to his very heart, announced the consummation of what is unfeelingly denominated-a day's sport.

Such were the Alderman's feelings, as he himself related them to me during our ride home together, ejaculating in conclusion, "It's a bad spec. sir, a Flemish account, a losing concern, this hunting; men, horses, and dogs all seized with a sudden madness, risking lives, destroying property; a whole district disturbed and up in arms to torture to death a little inoffensive hare. Every thing should be seen once, but I have seen enough, and too much of it; I have done with it.”

"If every thing should be seen once," said I," you will probably join our pheasant-shooting party to-morrow. "Not such an ass," exclaimed my companion bluntly. "Made my appearance among the Nimrods, but fight shy of the ramrods: don't stand going out to shoot, and coming home shot. He must be an awkward sportsman indeed that don't bring down one friend in a season. At our Life Assurance I proposed a clause- Warranted not to go a shooting with any friend or friends,' but they scouted it—more fools they.—Then if your companions hit the birds and miss you, they take good care, in crossing a stile, or scrambling through a hedge, to deposit eighty or ninety shot snug under your hip-bone, or your pointer puts his paw upon your trigger, and very lovingly blows your eyes out; or you yourself, for fear of accidents, discharge your gun as you reach home, when it ex plodes in your hand, and you sit down comfortable in your own parlour, leaving your thumb a-top of a neighbouring tree, and having three fingers dangling by a little bit of skin. They who thus lay their own lives against that of a pheasant, may be making a fair bet; but I think mine worth a trifle more, and besides, I hate to be giving unnecessary trouble to a coroner."

Here we parted, and as I pursued my ride alone, I had leisure to reflect upon the folly of laying the long odds, for I had been one of the simpletons who had wagered pretty deeply against the Alderman's being in at the death, all which bets we were decided to have lost, although he had not regularly followed the hounds, and was only present by accident at the destruction of the hare. As I was pretty much in the predicament of the devil when he wished to be a monk, sick at least of betting, I made many sage resolutions against the practice in future, pointing out to myself, in a very satisfactory manner, all the objections to which it was liable. In fact, I was rendered so poetical, as well as poor and penitent by my losses, that by the time I arrived at my own door, I had arranged my didactics into the following stanzas:

Bets are the blockhead's argument,
The only logic he can vent,

His minor and his major ;—
"Tis to confess your head a worse
Investigator than your purse,
To reason with a wager.

The fool who bets too high, will have
Temptation to enact the knave

And make his friend his martyr;
But they who thus would underhand
Entrap, may be themselves trepann'd,
And sometimes catch a Tartar.
Some slily make the matter sure,
And then propose with look demure,
The bet at stake to double;
Forgetting that whatever vogue
The trick may have, the man's a rogue
Whose betting is a bubble.

Tempt not yourself-still less your friends-
Where bets begin, attachment ends,

And up spring feuds and quarrels.
Leave wagers to the black-leg tribe,
Lest with their practice you imbibe
A portion of their morals.

LOVE AND INGRATITUDE.

*

THE following anecdote, though belonging to our own unpoetical and unromantic times, and though perfectly correct in all its details, will not, I trust, prove the less touching. It comes unaccompanied, it is true, by those glowing descriptions that gem the romances of the Great Unknown. In it will be found no wild and wizard forest, no well got up tempest, no monstrous dwarf nor fountain fairy; but lacking these advantages, it has-what the lovers in the Scottish novels have not— that fervid passion and heart-felt sentiment which made of Mademoiselle Gillimert the most unhappy, the most amiable, and the most interesting of women.

A few years ago the minister who was at the head of affairs in France, was a person of the most unblemished integrity, but his want of capacity and his ignorance were such as few, except those who had personal knowledge of the man, would be inclined to credit. I allude to the Duke de Richelieu, first minister to Louis XVIII. Two facts will give the measure of his mental acquirements;—as to his bravery and probity they were universally acknowledged, and have never been called in question. One of the things that most annoyed him, particularly when he had to speak in the Chamber of Peers, was his incapability of reading fluently. He was so occupied with the operation of spelling when he endeavoured to read from the tribune, that he frequently forgot altogether the meaning of the words he pronounced. The following fact will show how little of a statesman he was. On one occasion he received a letter from the modern Nero, Ferdinand VII. This sage sovereign, in a paroxysm of outraged and impotent pride at the revolt of his colonies, wrote to him, "I wish for no agent between you and me. If you will give me twenty vessels of war, I will make over in full sovereignty to France for ever the Island of Cuba—a place that with four thousand French grenadiers you may render impregna

*This story will naturally recall to the reader's mind the recent sacrifice of a virtuous, rich, and lamented lady, to the same species of vicious heartlessness which is here displayed.

ble." The Duke de Richelieu lost no time in peremptorily refusing this offer an offer, which, if accepted and carried into execution, would, by flattering the national vanity, have reconciled the French to the Bourbons. This president of Louis XVIII's Council seemed however to have formed a just estimate of his own capabilities, for the greater part of his time was passed in playing with a huge monkey, and in endeavouring to escape from the importunities of the Queen of Sweden, who, it was said, had conceived a violent passion for him. With these slender pretensions, he was, however, ambitious of remaining first minister to accomplish which not very easy task, he got about him some men of tried talent, such as M. Meunier, who had been secretary to Napoleon. But amongst these the person whom I shall call M. Moranbert, was not the least remarkable. Between this gentleman and myself a considerable degree of intimacy, from a similarity of pursuits and frequent opportunities of meeting, existed. He lived in the Rue du Bac, close to the Minister's hotel; my abode was in the Rue de Varennes; and his mistress Mademoiselle Gellimert lodged in the Place du Corps Legislatif. I have no hesitation in naming her by her right name, first, because she is no more, and next, because, many traits in her character cannot but secure to her memory the admiration and regret of every generous and feeling mind.

"But your voice falters as if you were going to weep?” said the philosopher Volney, to whom I was telling this anecdote." True, I think I yet see those large, black and languishing eyes, and hear that touching voice resounding in my ear and troubling my heart. Charming, unique creature! you are no more! Years have passed since the grave has hid you from my sight, and yet the recollection of you still stirs my inmost soul."-"You loved her then ?”—“No-Oh! Gillimert, oh! Moranbert! you were both prodigies-one of woman's tenderness-the other of man's ingratitude. Mademoiselle Gellimert belonged to a respectable family, which she quitted to throw herself into the arms of Moranbert. He had nothing, and the little property she was entitled to was entirely sacrificed to supply the necessities and even fantasies of Moranbert. She regretted neither her dissipated fortune nor her ruined reputation— her lover was all the word to her."-" This Moranbert must have been a most seductive irresistible sort of person?"-" On the contrary, he was a little, morose, taciturn and sarcastic-minded man, with a shrivelled countenance, a dark sallow complexion and a poor meagre figure; in a word, downright ugly, if a man can be called so, the expression of whose countenance announced intellect and sagacity."—" And it was such a being that turned the head of this charming girl ?"—" Does that surprise you?"" Certainly."-" You ?"—" Me."—" You forget then your adventure with Mademoiselle D—, and the utter despair into which you fell when that creature forbid you her house."—"Let us not think of that-go on with your story."-" When I asked you if she was beautiful, you mournfully replied, no. If she were witty, you answered that she was a simpleton. It must be her talents or accomplishments then that enchained you? You said she had but one-and on my asking what that rare, sublime and marvellous talent was, you replied, that it was that of rendering you a thousand times happier while in her society than you had ever been in that of any other woman. And why may not the warm-hearted tender Mademoiselle Gellimert have imagined that in the society of Moranbert, a happiness