'Neath the overcoat of Marlow peeps out the tartan vest, Marson. There wasted to a shadow young Boyce with envious eye That the speediest in heath annals was the race he won for Jaques (35). From the earliest dawn of April till the leaves the forest strew, On the pleasant downs of Epsom, by the winding banks of Dee, On the furzey waste of Ascot-where the Beacon towers above- Like a kindly treated stranger I linger o'er my leave (37), Of these sketches of the present and musings o'er the past. (1) The Abbot of Bury St. Edmonds undertook a journey abroad to ransom his king. (2) Cromwell, in spite of his Puritanic notions, encouraged racing as being necessary to encourage the breed of horses in England. (3) Johnson's Boswell wrote "The Club at Newmarket."It will be remembered that Bulwer's "Pelham" visits Newmarket in the novel of that name. (4) This celebrated match is well known to all. (5) Chifney, senior, had certain eccentric notions on riding a finish with a slack rein. (6) The strong remarks made upon Escapes in and out running induced the Prince to quit Newmarket for a season in high dudgeon. (7) I have good authority for stating this fact. (8) A famous short distance nag, and great favourite of "Hell-fire Dicks." (9) Sir Harry Vane ordered him to wait between the Ditch and the turn of the Lands; he, however, disobeyed, and won his race by easing his long striding horse up the hill."The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane," is a well-remembered expression of Cromwell's. (10) Eclipse generally ran with his nose almost touching the ground. (11) Sir Charles Bunbury, after whom a course has been christened. (12) Two well known head and pencil calculators respectively. (13) The Derby, Leger, and Oaks. Hanging a glove upon a lance was the Border denunciation of a breaker of faith. (14) In a Sweepstakes of 100 sovs. each at Newmarket First Spring, 1834, Plenipo met Glencoe; Robinson, who rode the latter, thus describes the race- I came," said he, "the first half mile, according to orders, as hard as I could lick but when I looked round there was the great bullock cantering close by my side." (15) Chifney rode Bloomsbury against Robinson on Clarion in the magnificent Cesarewitch struggle of 1840. (16) Antœus is supposed to have got an accession of strength every time he was thrown to the ground. (17) Faugh-a-Ballagh, 8st., and The Baron, 7st. 9lb., each won the Cesarewitch. (18) The Squire sweated himself down to 8st. 3lb., to ride his own horse King Charles for the 2000 gs. stakes in 1846. (19) The 100 yard race last year between Lord Chesterfield's and Glasgow's horses, the running of eighteen-hand Magog in 1842, and the Cab Horses match, must be fresh in the memory of sportsmen. (20) Minerva was one of the Earl's most famed favourite greyhounds. (21) Lord Eglintoune was croupier at the great Burus Festival 1844, and rode several steeple chases in his earlier days. (22) Chierry colour " is that adopted by Sir Joseph Hawley since he gave up the red and white stripes. (23) George the Fourth once spoke of the brothers Peel, in allusion to their father's connexion with the cotton trade, as "the raw and finished material." (24) Lord Stanley while at Christ Church, Oxford, gained the Latin verse poem. (25) In his M.P. days he once gravely requested the Speaker to put a question to the "Clerk of the Course," and substituted "House " for "Course" amid great laughter. (26) When his horses are at Pigburn he is in the habit of taking these moonlight trips. (27) Osbaldeston rode Tranby four times over the allotted "four miles" in this match. (28) Davis, the leviathan better, was a carpenter originally. (29) John Day, senior's, usual exclamation. (30) His escape in 1843 when he peppered this horse, and the Iliona affair are alluded to. (31) Son of the late Rev. Sydney Smith, so called from his first stunning with a boot-jack a stray bull-dog he once found in his college room, and then cutting its throat with a razor. (32) The eccentric Sam Day the jockey. (33) Mr. Gully sold St. Lawrence to Mr. Drinkald for a trifle, and saw him beat Mendicant for the Chester cup by a neck. "Good (34) The running made by Chapple when be won the Cheltenham stakes, 1839, by a head, on this horse, was so severe, that the spectators roared out, bye, Chapple, we'll not see you again," concluding I suppose that he could only land" in the middle of next week," not at the post. (35) The race between Queen of the Gipsies and Semiseria was probably the speediest ever timed, or even run, at Newmarket. (36) The vigorous rally made by the Doncastrians this year, on behalf of their meeting, will I trust meet with its reward in very superior entrees for the future. (37) Having touched upon nearly all the topics of sporting interest that occur to me in my four lays, I feel that it is now time (as the farmers said at the late agricultural dinner at Norwich, when Professor Sedgwick was giving them a geological after-dinner speech) to "cut it short." RECOLLECTIONS OF A WANDERER. All people are not blessed with the money necessary to obtain a mocr in Scotland, and it has become so much the fashion for noblemen and gentlemen to give permission to the tenant-farmers to kill the game upon their lands, that, except in places like the Highlands, exclusively devoted to shooting, it will be really difficult, in a few years, to find an unfortunate wild duck or snipe to shoot at. This is as it should be. We have always contended that the Game-law question should be settled like all other bargains, like all other questions of profit and loss, between the parties themselves; and that the public, the legislature, should not interfere; and the result has proved the truth of our remarks. Excessive game preserving was an evil, and is now ceasing; but, as in the railway panic, as in the recent revolutions, as in all human affairs, the re-action is likely to be greater than the action. We fear a furore will spring up for the annihilation of the fera naturæ, and that it will be difficult to find a duck or snipe to shoot at. We mention these birds because they are migratory, and may exist some years longer. As for the poor do mestic, quiet, regularly conducted pheasants and partridges, we tako it for granted that they are doomed, with kings and emperors, to perish. We scarcely take up a paper now without reading that His Grace, or My Lord, or Sir George, has allowed his tenants to kill game on their farms. Well, so be it! we cannot resist material utilitarian civilization; it is a necessity of existence. The fairies, banished from England, found refuge a little while longer in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales-perhaps the same fate may attend game-but let the Scotch Lairds and Lords beware! The Duke of Athol has been attacked by "moral force." Let him not forget that the Ameers of Scinde were destroyed by Sir Charles Napier and physical force, and that their offence was exclusively devoting their country to the purposes of hunting! Under these circumstances, and with these possibilities looming in the coming future, perhaps those readers who still think there is music in the click of a good double-barrel, when you raise the hammer, may thank us for informing them of a wild little corner of Great Britain where, when Norfolk is one vast mass of chymical earth, covered with turnips, untenanted by partridges, they may yet amuse themselves, amid the glories of external nature, with their favourite pastime of shooting. It was our misfortune to be a guest in a tolerably good house near Tremadoc, in North Wales. We say misfortune, because, though the walls of the house were good, there was nothing inside that deserved the epithet. A Welsh squire, without any Welsh quality belonging to him, except the accent of the country; with out horses fit for anything but the knackers' yard and the tan-pit; with out dogs, except a late beagle and a French poodle; without the shrewd humour that is rarely absent in Welshmen, is one of the greatest nusances that can afflict the carth. He had land, but neither hares nor partridges were on it, and if they had been, then he had neither pointers nor setters. A magnificent crescent of hanging cover, on a mountainside, surrounded the house. We took the poodle and lame beagle into it, and after struggling for half a day through briars and underwood, fit to have held a thousand pheasants, we heard from one of the beaters that a hare had been seen by some woman on the brow of the mountain in the course of the morning, so we abandoned the domains of our host, and threw ourselves on the hospitality of his neighbours; but the only hounds in the neighbourhood were harriers, and they only hunted in mountains inaccessible except on foot, and decidedly, though it may con duce to health, it is not very pleasant to run and climb up rough rocks and through gorse for several hours, far from any cottage or house where refreshment could be procured. So we abandoned the harriers. We next tried partridge shooting, but this is not very fascinating, when five brace is thought a good bag, and when each field you enter is surrounded by a stone wall seven feet high, the stones being large, loose, and sharp, and apt to tumble upon you in crossing them. Tremadoc is opposite a branch of the sea, the extreme end of Cardigan bay; into this runs the small river Glaslyn, and a vast tract of marsh land, reclaimed from the sen by Mr. Maddocks, borders the river, and forms a triangular surface of thousands of acres between the peaked and lofty mountains that inclose it. One morning, on the bright clear water, where the fresh river blends with the sea, we saw floating far away birds that very closely resembled ducks, and soon, rising from the water in long lines and angles, ducks they proved themselves to be. Wherever there are ducks one may have fun, that is, you can go after them; but wherever there are ducks in large numbers, you must be silent as the grave, and walk invisibly, or the feathers they shake from their bodies voluntarily are the only fcathers of theirs you will touch. We consulted the local Colonel Hawkers of the village and vicinity, but it is strange, that though thousands of ducks frequent this place, there was no punt, no wooden shell that would float, like a wreath of mist or foam, silently down the stream, to be procured. One person had a wooden horse, painted white, which he had tried once, but the horse (no wonder) was more appalling in appearance than the animal who used it to make his approach. We tried one morning at sunrise to steal upon the scattered groups, as they sunned themselves, after feeding, by drifting down the river in a small boat, but, alas! many a fine mallard reared his long neck, spread his wings to the morning wind, and with a loud "quack! quack!" left death and danger behind him. One night, when the moon was round and white, and the sky unclouded, and the aurora borealis (which we have frequently seen in Wales) was streaming in long, flickering, fitful lines over Snowdon, we, with a couple of lads, who know the pools and ditches on the marsh land well, provided with enough to sustain life cheerfully, marched forth to do execution on the ducks whilst feeding, but one might as well attempt to bag a moonbeam as scattered ducks at night, when a background of high land is near. A splash on the water, a "quack, quack," a whistling of the wings, was often heard, but to shoot was impossible. Snipes, teal, and widgeon frequently rose. It was in this neighbourhood that Shelley the poet lived for some time; it was here he wrote "Queen Mab;" it was these mountains, these woods, these waters, that inspired his lovliest and his earliest verse; and with such a scene before us, with such a recollection to hallow it, it was no great hardship to remain at a cottage before a peat fire, smoking and musing and listening to the strange language and shrill screaming accents of my Welsh guides for a few hours. At length the moon waxed paler and paler, till it nearly biended in its colour with the sky, an orange glow spread over the eastern hill, and we ordered our guide to lead us to the nearest pool. Silently, we took our way, and at length that gossiping, chattering, quarrelling noise that ducks make when feeding, saluted our ears; we halted, and cautiously peering through the long reeds, we saw ducks and teal, three hundred yards off, busily feeding at the side of a narrow pool. We made our guides stop, and crawled, taking a good circuit, to the side of the pool opposite to which the ducks were; we were successful; they only took the alarm when we were within thirty yards of them; then up sprang about thirty ducks and teal, and a heron. We fired first at the latter, and down he came in a graceful curve, his huge wings slowly closing, with a shot through the head. Our next barrel brought down a duck and teal; we used No. 4 shot, and a common gun. Those who have only shot ducks in enclosed, cultivated countries have no idea how cunning they are when wounded; they will hide in the reeds and rushes, dive and come up by the side, and there remain quiet until you are close upon the very spot. Without a dog, and in this Bort of shooting a dog would do more harm by the noise he would make than his services would be worth, a second shot is the easiest way of settling the business. We proceeded in the same manner from pool to pool, often coming upon six or eight ducks, and larger flocks of teal till the sun had risen and cleared away the mist, and then ducks and teal. went off to sea, where they remained till dusk, and then returned, and scattered to feed. But when the ducks are gone, very good snipe-shooting can be obtained. There were also on some detached rocks, rising from the marsh, a few quails. The first half-hour before sunrise is the best time to commence, and for an hour and a half afterwards very fair shooting may be had; we have frequently killed five or six couple of ducks, widgeon, and teal; but if you only wound, without breaking its wing, or stopping it-a teal-you are almost sure to lose it. It is almost incredible, but a bird of prey is nearly certain to carry it off. One side of the marsh is flanked by cliffs, the base of which was once washed by the sea, and these cliffs swarm with kites and hawks: at the sound of the first shot, out they come, sailing and gyrating slowly over-head, and more than one teal that has fallen at a hundred and fifty or two hundred yards distance, we have seen these birds seize and carry off. In England, where numerous keepers do their duty, hawks are comparatively rare; and we presume, there being less competition, they have enough to eat, and are less bold. But in Wales, one first of September, three of us had fired at a covey, and five or six birds were on the ground, one with a broken wing, springing up and attempting to rise, when a small hawk made a swoop at it, seized it, lifted it up, and was nearly killed by a keeper with a dog-whip-so close were we to it at the time. If it had been twenty yards further off, we had no doubt it would have carried the partridge away, but the wounded bird flapping its wings, embarressed the hawk, and the keeper was within two yards of it when it thought it prudent to drop its prey, and retire. Though ducks are so cautious and wild, we have seen strange instances to the contrary. We were walking in a narrow lane, with deep ditches on either side, in Buckinghamshire, in the month of February, some years since, and saw three ducks feeding at the bottom of the ditch. We remarked to a friend that they were wild ducks. Of course he thought it impossible, as we were not ten yards from them; they raised their necks, looked at us, allowed us to approach within three yards of them, and then rose and flew off; and fhis was so far from any gentleman's park that they could not have been tame wild-ducks. Another time, in Cheshire, where, in almost every field there is a small pit filled with water, we saw a mallard asleep within ten yards of the side of one of these pits on the water-we shot it. Another time we stood by one of these pits whilst a keeper beat round it, and flung stones into it; nothing rose; the dogs ran round it, and left it, and when we had gone about seventy yards, a loud "mark, "mark," from the astonished keeper caused us to look back, and a duck was rising from the pit we had just been round. The duck-shooting at Tremadoc was not so exciting, or on so large a scale as that of Colonel Hawker, still it was better than ordinary tame partridge, snipe, or pheasant shooting, and what is more, it will last; it does not depend upon laws or protection, or the generous caprices of noble philanthropists. We believe the gentleman who, strictly speaking, has the right of shooting over the marsh in question, lives at the beautiful house erected by the late Mr. Maddock; but we know that, though |