Naples, and was couched in all the romance of a young and ardent mind, surrounded by the stirring memories of that classic shore :

"On board H.M.S., Bay of Naples. "DEAREST CECILIA,-I am in Italy-the land of song, poetry, beauty! Yesterday we anchored in this splendid bay, and, in the evening, some of us youngsters were allowed to land for a few hours. Oh, my sister! imagine-for I cannot pourtray - my feelings when for the first time I beheld the country hallowed by so many associations, when first my foot pressed the soil immortalized by the eloquence of Cicero, the attic salt of Flaccus, and the silver song of the swan of Mantua!

"P.S.-At eight, P.M., returned on board, and finished the evening with Bologna sausages."

This cured me of journal-writing. Well for me it did so-this 16th of December had borne no retrospect. I was to leave town on the morrow, so we took several parting stoups; some capital pineapple Jamaica had been superadded to our weeds, and the conversation had taken a very miscellaneous character. The last contribution to the conviviality of the evening that I retain any recollection of was a volunteer, on the part of my sylvan symposiate, of " Love among the roses." Before, however, he had arrived at the Paphian bower, his chair-perhaps enchanted by his strain, as of old the stones by the notes of Orpheus-was seized with such an unaccountable fit of restlessness that, malgré his best efforts, he was deposited upon the floor; and, being warned in time of the extreme unsteadiness of the seat I occupied, I made a silent retreat; to borrow an example from the Eton grammar-our symposium had ended like omne quod exit in rum."

BRIGHTON.

"Far from the western cliff he cast his eye
O'er the wide occan, stretching to the sky;
In calm magnificence the sun declined,
And left a paradise of clouds behind:

Proud at his feet, with pomp of pearl and gold
The billows in a sea of glory rolled."—

It was sunset when I reached

ROGERS'S FRAGMENTS ON COLUMBUS.

"This Eden of the western wave."

Dinner ordered (alas, that carnal necessities will mingle with, and pollute our best and holiest sympathies!) I crossed over for a twilight ramble upon the esplanade: my ears were yet ringing with the sounding vanities of the world,

"That flowery descent to death,"

down which the countless temptations of the metropolis precipitate the strongest in resolution: God help me, I had never an ounce of ballast to steady the cockle-shell, in which, hoisting canvas enough for a three-decker, I launched upon a sea, whose morning billows reflect the dancing sunbeams, but whose evening surges are too often

strewed with shipwrecked hope and happiness. Think not that I am of creed with those who would turn the bloom and beauty with which an all-munificent Deity surrounds us, into the despair of the howling wilderness. I have suffered-who has not?-but not as those who will not be comforted. What a twilight of glory! 'Tis not evening, and yet Aurora has veiled from us her cheek of passing lustre, whose fading blush tinges the wave that drank her farewell kiss! All around is lustrous, lucid, balmy: a globe of clouds, the living colour of crimson, from which a Venus might have descended within the last moment, and which looked as if awaiting her return from an evening visit to Adonis, rests upon a sky of lapis lazuli. Is that a star that gleams upon the purple canopy? or a diamond, rich and rare enough to set the King of Visapour in battle array against the King of Golconda? Fair daughter of the Eve! thou art to me indeed a jewel beyond all price! while thus I gaze upon thee

"The world forgetting, by the world forgot,"

I drink of the living spring of promise, and hail thee as the bright impersonation of Hope! Lord of the impassioned soul! Imagination! ever thus let me draw from thy golden urn the lustre of delight, and love to colour existence, else how "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable" are its bad and dull realities! the lustre may fade, but the spirit it visited is ever-green, like a spring-touched meadow, that smiles on, though the gracious sun be, for a space, o'ercast, nothing doubting that in sparkling showers he will soon return.

Ellis's Sea House Hotel hath a most cosy, comfortable coffee-room, such as the most fastidious elderly male, unwed, might be content with. I never desire to accomplish a better, so having taken refreshment, I prepared to retreat to my couch. All my life I have had a horror of the accompaniments to the boot-jack, common to hotels; monstrous, unshapen masses, called slippers, generally constructed out of a cut-down Wellington, rejected by the old-clothes-man, or the unsymmetrical "high-low" of some defunct hostler. Into these leathern inconveniences you are obliged to trust yourself, fitting your feet like a couple of children's coffins; with much ingenuity you succeed in shuffling in them across the coffee-room, as if you had paralysis of both sides; you essay to pass the hall, when plop goes your warm sole upon the cold damp flags, or where some one hath recently spat. Bah! The porter at the Sea-house has actual accommodations, genuine leather and prunella, that do him credit.

I was awakened the morning after my arrival, by a voice in high falsetto, crying under my window, "Any fish, to-day, if you please, ma'am? If you please, ma'am! What an atmosphere of politeness must encompass a court! We have heard of "honour among thieves;" here we have manners among fish-fags! There appears to be about half-a-dozen inmates of the house, who use the public-room: at breakfast, one of them handed me The Globe, another remarked, on seeing me pull the Venetian blind down, to keep out the sun, that "it was a fine morning," so that we progress towards good-fellowship. I hope for the best from these developments. Having ridden for an hour upon the Downs, I took a turn

376

FRAGMENTS FROM THE DIARY OF A SEXAGENARIAN.

upon the cliffs, where I underwent such a dusting as I never experienced before in the flesh asked why the devil they didn't water the drives, to save the acres of Genoa velvet and Saxony broadcloth exposed to such profuse top-dressing, and was told that water was too valuable just now for such purposes, as it must be purchased by the quart! It struck me that the sea might have furnished a supply, but I suppose I don't understand these matters. All this time I have not, you will say, given you a solitary Soho! or shown you as much as the hair of a brush. Have you need of the mere narrative of a chase? The public papers will furnish a score every day, and so alike that you may change only the names, and make one description answer for all the counties in England, and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. "On Monday, Mr. John Smith's crack pack met at Beechwood Coppice: scarcely had the hounds been thrown in, when "away" was the cry, and as fine a fox as ever was tallied faced the open; crossing Waggon-rut Lane, he led his staunch pursuers for Squash-bottom, a pace that put them to the best of their mettle; he now took up the high grounds, and over Crackskull Common it was the most beautiful sight ever witnessed. Pug, however, was destined to the same fate that, during the season, has attended all his fellows that have ever stood before these unrivalled hounds, and they ran into him after a chase of ten miles, as the crow flies, without a check. Tom Bugle, of course, was with his hounds from find to finish, and nothing could surpass the beautiful riding of Bob Longthong the first whip, except the splendid style of going of Mr. John Smith, which was the theme of universal" et cetera, et ceterorum.

In my mind, a yarn about hunting topography is as deadly-lively a job as a Gaudeamus of the Elect. Upon no nation on the face of the earth do I think dinner operates, as it does upon the English. You shall see a bitter old smellfungus enter a tavern, and call for a rump-steak and oyster-sauce, with a face that would turn a whole dairy of cream; and no sooner has a pound of animal matter descended his æsophagus, than the vinegar-faced curmudgeon weareth a countenance as bland as the sunny side of a peach: so it came to pass, that after dinner had been achieved, at the sundry tables surrounding our coffee-room, a kind of general conversation sprang up, and manifest overtures were made towards cordiality. I found that I had pitched my tent accidentally among a knot of my own kidney -men worshipping Diana with much fervency, though they aspired not to bow at her highest altar: hunting at once became our topic; what had been done, related; what was to be hoped for, debated: some goodish anecdotes of the chase, too, were circulated; one of them, as illustrating a favourite position of my own, I will give you.

"A few years ago," said Mr. C., the gentleman who had handed me The Globe in the morning, "I was hunting with Sir Harry Mainwaring, in Cheshire; at that time Will Head hunted the Cheshire hounds. It had so happened, that on two or three occasions a fox, found upon a part of the Forest of Delamere, always contrived to floor us at one particular spot. Now Will Head was a

choleric man, and as obstinate as the devil, when he had settled anything with himself: so he vow'd that he would see all the foxes that were ever littered d- -d before they should serve him after such a fashion as that. Well, we found our fox soon after, at the same old place, and again lost him as usual. This was hard by a large farm-stead, with a yard of an acre or so attached to it. In this instance I ventured to hint to Head that Charley had probably 'spouted' himself in a drain which ran across it.

"We'll try, at all events, sir,' said he; 'so to it we went.'

"I was stationed at one end, and he stood sentry at the other, while the whips and farm servants began to open it in different places. Scarcely had they commenced digging, when Will sung out," "Tally-ho! here he is here is his brush, by

"Well,' said I, if you've his brush at your end, he must be a long fox, for I've his teeth fastened in my whip at mine.'

"So on they went digging, and before we finished, two brace and a half of foxes were taken out of it."

In such talk as this we beguiled the night. What came of it shall be dotted down at my earliest leisure.

SPORTS OF THE WORLD, ANCIENT AND MODERN.

BY LORD WILLIAM LENNOX.

"And sport, that wrinked care derides."

MILTON.

The above quotation from the pen of the poet Milton-he of the muse, not our friend" Mat of the mens"-has suggested the following article upon that truly English word "sport," which embraces every species of games, from the "Olympic revels" of former days down to those of the hippodrome and stadium of our own time.

Games and combats formed a part of all the festivals, religious as well as others, of the ancients. There were four held in Greece: the Olympic, celebrated every four years near Olympia or Pisa, a town of Elis in Peloponnesus; the Pythian, sacred to Apollo, who killed the serpent Python, and which were also held quaternially at Delphi; the Nemaan, celebrated every two years; and lastly, the Isthmian, held upon the Isthmus of Corinth, quaternially, in honour of Neptune. In those days, cups, shields, and pieces of plate were unknown, a simple wreath was all the reward of the victors. In the Olympic games it was composed of olive; in the Pythian of laurel; in the Nemæau of green parsley; and in the Isthmian of the same herb dried: honour, not interest, influenced their actions. Fancy the winner of the Derby in our day being rewarded with a crown of

olive; the winner of the Oaks with a wreath of laurel; the winner of the Goodwood cup with some green parsley; and the hero of the St. Leger with ditto fried;-and all for honour. I fear many of our sporting characters would say, with the fat knight, "Honour pricks me on; yet, but how if honour pricks me off when I come on. Can honour pay a trainer's bill? No. Or purchase hay and corn? No. Or keep up a stud? No."

The Olympic meeting, which was the Goodwood of that day (save that the gentler sex were forbidden, under pain of death, attending it), lasted five days, and consisted of boxing; wrestling; the pancratium, which was a sort of united fight and wrestle, in which hands, feet, teeth, and nails might be employed; quoits; and racing. Added to these were leaping, throwing the dart, and archery. We commence with the latter.

ARCHERY.

"Those who in skilful archery contend

He next invites, the twanging bow to bend."

Homer gives a most graphic description of an archery meeting, a sort of Red House pigeon-match, between two crack shots, "experienced Merion and skilful Teucer." The mark was a milkwhite dove, tied by a cord to the top of the mast of a first-rate galley. The prizes were ten double-edged war-axes, to whoever killed the bird; and ten single war-axes to whoever divided the cord. The competitors draw lots, and Teucer gets the first shot, dividing the cord with a single arrow (if this is not shooting with a long-bow, we know not what is). Merion, the Osbaldiston of the day, then takes his aim, and bags his bird on the wing. The sports of the day wind up with hurling the dart, a game in which Merion also excels.

WRESTLING.

"The third bold game Achilles next demands,
And calls the wrestlers to the level sands."

We pass over the wrestlers, referring our readers to Homer, who gives an account of the combat between Ajax and Ulysses; to Ovid, for that of Hercules and Achelous; to Lucan, for that of Hercules and Antæus; and to the Thebaid of Statius for that of Tydeus and Agylleus. Milo of Crotona-query, is the word "milling" derived from this hero-and Polydamas were the pets of the Greek fancy among the wrestlers. Of the boxing we shall briefly say, that the ancients must have been round hitters; for they were wont to cover their heads with a sort of leather cap, to protect their temples and ears. There was no "minute time" in those days; for when once the combatants came to the scratch, they fought until nature was quite exhausted; a truce was then made for a few moments, and they again set to work, seldom finishing the fight until one had fallen a victim to it. Homer gives quite a Pierce Eganish account of a regular "stand-up fight" between Epeus and Euryalus; and the reader may enjoy a regular intellectual treat, worthy of "Bell's Life," by referring to Theocritus and Appollonius Rhodius for the "mill" between Pollux and Amycus; to Virgil. or the