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plotter of Southampton-buildings, whose career we have sketched in a previous number,* was added to the ghastly series. The fifth and sixth were added in 1746, after the Scotch rebellion. On July the 15th, 1746 (twentieth George the Second), Colonel Francis Townley was tried for high treason, in the court-house of St. Margaret's-hill, Southwark. Among the judges and justices present on this occasion were Lord Chief Justice Willes and Sir Thomas de Veale, whom Hogarth has celebrated. Townley, of an old Lancashire family, had fought for the French king, and had been the first to join the Pretender. It was proved only too clearly that he had been seen, on the retreat from Derby, riding at the head of the Manchester regiment, brave and gallant, in plaid sash and white cockade. The companion head was that of George Fletcher, a rash young Salford shopkeeper. He had been seen mounting guard at Carlisle, and beating up for volunteers on the Manchester Exchange. Both men died bravely on Kennington Common, first throwing their prayer-books and gold-laced hats to the crowd. Their hearts were cast into a

fire, and a fighting man of the day eat a piece of Townley's flesh to show his zeal for the House of Hanover and the winning side. Horace Walpole tells us that men made a trade of letting out telescopes to see these heads on the Bar more clearly.

The last head blew down in 1771, and the hateful spikes were removed early in the present century.

CHANTREY'S WOODCOCKS.

THIS name suggests a subject in which sporting, sculpture, and poetry were combined in a more than usually pleasant way, each giving a zest to the other two, and the whole forming a halo around a genial and distinguished man.

Somewhat more than forty years ago, Sir Francis Chantrey, the eminent sculptor, formed one among a number of guests at Holkham Hall, Norfolk, the seat of Mr. Coke, afterwards Earl of Leicester, the most celebrated commoner in his day for all that befits the life of an English country gentleman. It was in the shooting season, towards the close of November; and the sculptor was glad enough to join in a sport of which he was a keen admirer. The party

See ALL THE YEAR ROUND, New Series, vol. iv.,

p. 402.

were ranged by the host, according to the rules which sportsmen approve; and at the very beginning of the day's proceedings Sir Francis Chantrey had a bit of luck which made him quite the hero. One of the guests present, Mr. Spencer Stanhope, in a letter written soon afterwards to a Norfolk clergyman, told simply what the achievement was, although he did not know all the attendant circumstances. "Chantrey was placed in the gravel-pit that, you will remember, is just under the Hall. I was standing next to him, but hidden from him by the bank formed by the pit. Knowing how keen a sportsman he was, I was amazed at seeing him running up to me, without his gun, just at the moment when the hares were passing us in all directions; but when I saw him waving his Peruvian hat" (Chantrey loved to "get himself up" in a picturesque way when with a shooting party) over his head, and distinguished his joyous countenance, I knew that all was right. Two woodcocks at one shot!' burst from him, and announced to me the feat that he had performed."

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How far such a double shot is a rarity, we shall see presently; but the company present resolved to make much of the incident. Mr. Coke marshalled all-sportsmen, keepers, and beaters-in a line, made Chantrey pass along the rank, and every one doffed his hat and made a bow to him. On that same evening a resolution, a kind of pleasant manifesto, was drawn up at Holkham Hall, to the effect that, Amidst the events of this day, it is especially worthy of being recorded that Mr. Chantrey" (he had not been knighted at that time) "killed at one shot two woodcocks. Considering this exploit as among the many illustrious achievements, if not the most extraordinary, of that great and extraordinary man, it was unanimously proposed to Mr. Coke that the spot should thenceforth be handed down to posterity, and the honour of the individual perpe tuated, by the name of Chantrey's Hill being given to it-assured that no sculptor in Europe had ever done before so much in the art of shooting: Mr. Chantrey having but the day before killed at one shot a hare and a rabbit." This document was witnessed by Mr. Coke, Archdeacon Glover, and Mr. Spencer Stanhope; a copy of it was presented to the sculptor, and is preserved among the Chantrey manuscripts.

Chantrey had the use of only one eye. This fact was not much known except to his personal friends, for the blind eye pre

sented nearly the same outward appearance as the other. It might have affected his shooting with an ordinary gun, but he had one adapted and sighted to suit his own special need. Many years afterwards, when the sculptor was no more, the author of Memorials of Chantrey said that Sir Francis's proficiency with rod and gun had been overrated. This was denied by the Holkham friends, who ranked Chantrey high among their number as a marksman. It seems pretty clear, however, that the double shot was the result of accident; for he stated that he saw, and aimed at, only one woodcock; the other rose from the ground, came into the line of sight just at the critical moment, and shared the fate of its feathered companion.

Mr. Muirhead, whose volume we shall notice presently, quotes from a private letter a somewhat similar instance of a sportsman bringing down more than he had aimed at. "As you are fond of a sporting anecdote, I may tell you what occurred to me yesterday, in making my first beat of the season after woodcocks at Haywood. I was walking towards a large clump of hollies, with the keeper about thirty yards on my right, when two woodcocks got up together, one flying to the left of the clump, and the other to the right. I fired at the left bird, and brought him down, calling out to the keeper to mark the other; when he replied, 'I saw only one bird, which you killed.' This surprised me, as I had picked up my bird considerably to the left of the clump, and quite out of sight of the keeper. But whilst we were discussing the matter, and trying to account for the extraordinary disappearance of the second bird, my old Belle was observed at a dead point, about forty yards beyond the clump of hollies; and there we found the missing bird under her nose. The only way in which I can account for the circumstance is, that the right-hand bird must have crossed the line of sight just as I fired at the bird on the left-which, by the way, fell within twenty yards of the gun."

In after years, this achievement of the sculptor-sportsman gave rise to a considerable rummaging of sporting records for instances of double, triple, or multiple success with one shot. It soon became evident that Chantrey's shot was far from being the most remarkable known; it was remembered rather for the celebrity of the man than for the marvel of the aim. Colonel Hawker, in his Book of Instructions to Young Sportsmen, gives many instances

of wonderful " bags;" and a multitude of instances have presented themselves since his book was written. On one occasion eight hooper swans, averaging nineteen pounds each, were knocked down at one shot. On another, thirty-five wild geese were killed by one discharge of a single-barrelled punt gun. But instances in point are more fairly those connected with shooting game than shooting wild-fowl. Lieutenant Kirkes once brought down six snipes with one shot out of a wisp of seven; and his son, Captain Kirkes, killed a grouse and two hares at once, the hares sitting on a rising ground, and the grouse flying towards it. A gamekeeper named Alexander Strachan, in the service of the Earl of Kintore, on one occasion shot six snipes on the wing at one time. In 1856, on the Scottish moors, a sportsman stalked up to four black-cocks, caught them in a line as they rose, and killed them all; three fell at once, and the fourth a hundred yards distant from them. Mr. Muirhead once fired at two partridges as they rose together from some long wheat stubble, brought them down at one shot just as they got on the wing, and mortally wounded three others which had not risen. A wild shot at a covey, as they turned over a low part of a hedge, was rewarded by bringing down nine birds at once. Doctor Sandwith, who bore so honourable a part in the defence of Kars by Colonel Sir Fenwick Williams, during the Crimean war, was shooting on a branch of the Euphrates near Erzeroum, and bagged four spoonbills at one shot. A man named Croft, in the year 1856, while shooting on the river Wye, killed eighteen grey plovers at one shot, and on another occasion sixteen ducks; but this was achieved by means of a large swivel gun, fixed in a boat, and loaded with a quarter of a pound of powder and a pound of shot-rather hard lines for the birds. This of course belonged to the wildfowl series. And so did one recorded by Colonel Hawker, in which twenty widgeons, ducks, pintails, and plovers were brought down at once with a common shoulder gun that carried only five ounces of shot. He speaks also of forty-three knots and godwits being killed at one discharge by three ounces of number four shot. A keeper on a Norfolk estate, early in the century, killed seven bustards at one shot; but his manner of doing it would hardly have been regarded by the bustards as fair play. He looked out for their tracks on the snow, and put cabbages there to attract them; he planted

a battery of three large duck guns at a distance of a hundred and fifty yards, all pointing to that spot; and he arranged three strings from the three triggers to a pit or hole a short distance behind. Taking his seat in the hiding-place at daybreak, he watched his opportunity, and brought down seven bustards with a simultaneous discharge of the three guns. Lest there should be some numerical mistake in the statement that five hundred starlings were once brought down with one discharge of a single-barrelled punt gun, we will pass it by.

But to return to our Chantrey. The day was so pleasant to him, the compliments so merry, that he resolved to perpetuate the memory of the event in his own way. He sculptured the two woodcocks, as a monument to their memory. Arranging them as dead game, in such a way as best to show the markings of the plumage, he modelled them in clay, and chiselled them in white marble. They formed a kind of alto-relievo in front of a vertical slab, and have ever since been admired for their delicate and graceful execution. alto-relievo is the inscription:

Two WOODCOCKS KILLED AT HOLKHAM,

Nov., 1830,

Over the

BY FRANCIS CHANTREY, SCULPTOR,

AT ONE SHOT.

PRESENTED TO

THOS. WM. COKE, ESQ., 1834.

This 1830 is said to be a mistake; the year was 1829. The sculpture is at Holkham Hall; the model, or a plaster cast of it, is in the Chantrey Gallery at Oxford; while Sir Edwin Landseer introduced the two woodcocks in a picture which afterwards became the property of Lady Chantrey.

The titled, the learned, the artistic, the poetic, all who partook of the hospitality of Holkham, admired this beautiful handiwork of Chantrey; and as all of them had heard of the celebrated shooting, they began to associate the two events as cause and effect -the achievement of the gun and the achievement of the chisel. It was very tempting to men who could write elegant epigrams. Chantrey killed two birds, and then made them almost live again in marble here was a subject ready at once; and divines, statesmen, judges, poets, artists, wrote their pleasant bits of versification. More than a quarter of a century later, Mr. Muirhead, one of the Holkham circle, resolved to collect all these epigrams, so far as he could, and to print them so far as he was permitted. Lady Chantrey

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placed at his disposal all the manuscript material in her possession. Holkham library brought forth twenty-seven of the jeux d'esprit; Lord Brougham procured some that had been written by Bishop Maltby, Lord Tenterden, and Sir John Williams; and other friends brought treasures to the storehouse from other quarters. The result was the publication of an elegant volume, called Winged Words on Chantrey's Woodcocks: edited by James Patrick Muirhead. The poets were forty-two in number; but the separate epigrams themselves, including translations of those in Greek and Latin, rose to a hundred and seventy-nine. Of course those in Greek can only be understood by learned folk. One by Archdeacon Glover was translated by the archdeacon himself, thus:

Tho' fall'n by Chantrey's hand, we yet survive; His gun may kill, his chisel makes alive. Another, in four lines, by Bishop Selwyn, was given by him in Greek and in Latin; but we will merely present Canon Bowles's English translation:

Both had one fate; their lives together end; And both to gloomy Acheron descend. Mourn not their end, nor deem their fate severe, Fix'd by transcendent art immortal here. Bishop Maltby, Sir John Williams, Doctor Jelf, the Master of Balliol, and other classical scholars, in like manner brought their knowledge of Greek to bear on the subject; while the Marquis Wellesley, Archdeacon Wrangham, the Reverend W. G. Cookesley, Lord Tenterden, the Head Master of Winchester, and others, chose rather to put their Latin to the test.

Anson, appears among the bards :
One lady, the Honourable Frederica

Long may this spotless marble tell,
When Chantrey fired two woodcocks fell:
They met their doom together.
But now, by his transcendent art,
Into new life he bids them start,
And makes them live for ever.

Bishop Wilberforce contributed this:
Life in death, a mystic lot,

Dealt thou to the winged band.
Death, from thine unerring shot;
Life, from thine undying hand!
Lord Jeffrey, the celebrated editor of the
Edinburgh Review, wrote:

The life the sportsman-artist took,
The artist-sportsman could restore;
As true and warm in ev'ry look,
And far more lasting than before.

Mr. Jekyll found two lines sufficient for the following:

"Two birds with one stone;" but the point has wit If one stone revives both the birds it has hit.

Three couplets of Lord Jeffrey, each complete in itself, are similar examples of a kind of epigram by no means easy to produce :

Their good and ill from the same source they drew,
Here shrin'd in marble by the hand that slew.
For their reft lives the slaughter to atone,
Here gives an immortality in stone.

The same skill'd hand that took their lives on high,
Here, on this marble, bids them never die.
The late Allan Cunningham gave a
dozen lines to the subject:

The snowy hills of Norway bred us,
The silver springs of Holkham fed us;
A sculptor, as we wing'd our way,
Held out his gun and made us clay;
But, sorrowing for us as we fell,
To marble turn'd us by a spell.
Princes and peers flock'd in a bevy,

And said, "How glorious! done in gravy!"
Geologists look'd marvelling on,

But feeling, cried, "By Heav'n, a stone!" While Buckland, that superb dissector Of things in flint, said, "Lads, a lecture!" The opportunity tempted many others to throw bits of humour into the matter. In those days, between the period of the shooting of the birds and that of the sculpturing of the marble, the Reform Bill was a spe cially exciting topic; and Baron Alderson brought it into requisition in the following

way:

Here lie the fruits of Chantrey's gun:
Two woodcocks, yet the shot but one!
Oh had he been content to kill
"The Bill and nothing but the Bill!"

And Mr. Muirhead:

A rare success was Chantrey's lot,
He bagg'd us at a single shot;
And to commemorate his skill,

In marble made the Re-form'd Bill!

The same epigrammatist gave a sly poke at Chantrey in the following; but the sculptor would have accepted it as being quite fair, seeing that, although he certainly did hit two birds with one shot, he, as certainly (to use a homely phrase) "didn't go to do it."

Sir Francis must sure have been much in the habit

Of missing each partridge, hare, pheasant, and rabbit;
For once when he kill'd, by a shot transcendental,
Two woodcocks, the verdict was "Death accidental."

Here is another, from the same pen :
Chantrey invented the best of gun-locks,
Which cocks one hammer, and hammers two cocks!
Mr. Hudson Gurney's muse produced
the following triplet:

Down from the north that would have starv'd them,
This was the way that Chantrey sarv'd them,
He shot them first, and then he carv'd them!
One more, by Lord Jeffrey :

The sculptor killed them at a shot,
And when the deed was done,
He carv'd them-first, upon one toast,
And then, upon one stone!

These are only a sample of the gems in Mr. Muirhead's elegant volume, which, although it has been published many years, is known only within a limited circle.

A SKETCH.

OUR cottage crests the summit of a hill,
That rises o'er an old cathedral town.
There float through summer noontides, warm and still,
Rare scents of heather from the purple down;
There the sweet April shadows glance and play,
There autumn's glory glows from golden leas,
And the wild north winds of the winter's day,
Bring keen fresh waftings from the far-off seas.
Through the calm July evenings' sunset blush,
Where the dark woods sweep round the glittering
river,

Through the rich silence of the country hush,
We hear the soft rain mid the grasses shiver.
Our little garden like a jewel gleams,

Full, like a cup, of bright old homely flowers,

And through the breath of breeze-wooed roses streams The bells' faint clashing from the minster towers. Lingering at nightfall by the lonely house,

Mid jasmine stars in dark-green foliage set,
And tall white lilies in majestic rows,

And fragrant musk, and dewy mignonette,
In the deep valley, one by one, we see
The humble town put out its lingering lights,
While the great towers that face us solemnly,
Take up their brooding vigil with the night's.
We muse how every separate homestead bears
Its separate crown of joy, or cross of sorrow,
Ere taking our own weight of hopes or cares,

To court their brief oblivion till the morrow.
The morrow, which to cottage, grange, or hall,
Brings twelve long hours, each fraught with weal

or woe.

Ah! gather present peace, thank God for all: Most, that no future we are given to know.

MY FIRST MYSTERY.

I AM going to relate an occurrence which some people will think very insignificant. In the even tenour of my homely life, however, it was what is termed an "event." It turned out for the best, as many bitter things do in this life of struggle. Many, I am told, are scourged by the affliction under which I unconsciously suffered. relate my experiences, therefore, by the earnest advice of my friend the vicar, for the benefit of all whom they may concern.

I

I lived on the borders of Epping Forest, in a small house, which looked like a tall square tower of brick; it was old, and covered over at one side, and part of another, with ivy. There was a pretty little flower-garden, with the finest stock-gilliflowers in that part of the world in front, and hollyhocks of various colours, and roses nodded over the wooden paling. A very good fruit garden, though the trees were a little old, containing apples and pears, together with gooseberries and raspberries, and other "small fruit," was in the rear.

would quite suffice her every week. She told me she never drank wine, beer, or any other exciting fluid; and at dinner, luncheon, and supper, her glass always stood empty, except when there was water I loved her more and more every

I was always a staid, quiet fellow, who liked home and a punctual, comfortable life, but being a bachelor, I began, at the age of nine-and-thirty, to feel a little lonely, and my income being nearly five hundred a and my house and appurte-in it. year, nances being quite enough for a modest day. family, I very secretly, and with much precaution, began to look out for a wife.

I don't think any one suspected me of matrimonial tendencies, with so much circumspection did I conduct matters.

I believe people supposed me to be rather older than I actually was. My hair was a little thin at top; some people said I was bald; perhaps I was so. My face is not short and dumpy. I don't think there is anything vulgar about it. It is long and thin, not a smirking, impudent countenance, but very grave, and perhaps a little shy. I was thin, and held myself strictly upright, and never practised that loose way of throwing my limbs about that some men affect. I called young ladies "miss," and their mammas "madam," and treated both equally with the ceremonious respect that flatters their self-esteem, without for a moment violating that profound sense of decorum which is ever uppermost in the mind of a young lady of delicate feelings and refined education.

I had no doubt that I should be fortunate enough, in consequence of the marked superiority, in the points I have indicated, of my manners (and with ladies manner is everything, appearance very little) over those of the young men who were then to be met with-I say I had no doubt that I should be fortunate enough to please whatever young lady out of the eleven with whom I had the honour to be acquainted I should ultimately select for the partner of my life and the regulator of my household.

I chose Miss Martha Pendles.
She was
tall and silent, had commanding black eyes,
and was full of prudence. I knew I had
only to speak. I did. She looked surprised.
Her magnificent black eyes were fixed
steadily upon me for nearly half a minute,
while she meditated, and then she accepted

me.

She was, I may say, much admired. She was majestically handsome. I felt that I was fortunate. I had secured the most devoted and economical of women.

She came home. I assured her of my undying affection, and talked of culinary and household affairs. I asked her, among other things, how much wine-it was a subject I was sensitive upon-she thought

I found her advice most valuable. She recommended me strongly, for instance, to cultivate her cousin, Captain Thunder. He was tall, loud, and had black whiskers. His name was Thomas Frisk Thunder, and his air was festive and military.

He was in delicate health, though he looked robust. He was threatened with consumption: but his colour was florid, and his appetite excellent. But consump tion is a treacherous complaint, and its advances, I am told, insidious and disguised.

He had twenty thousand pounds in three per cent government stock, and had quarrelled with all his relations except ourselves.

I quite agreed with my wife. Here kindness and prudence pointed in the same direction. We were very attentive to him. He almost lived at Poplar Hollow, that was the name of our house. We bore a great deal from him. He had that loose way of flinging his limbs about, which I spoke of, and which Martha detested as much as I; and he was totally destitute of the respect ful deference and reserve which are found always so winning with the fair sex. I have seen him, when he thought I was not looking, chuck Martha under the chin. And, for both our sakes, she bore it like an angel. But when I talked of it to her, she requested me to tell him how it disgusted her; which I did, and begged of him to consider a lady's feelings; which he promised me he would.

Everything was going on thus happily, and he was growing to like us more and more, when his regiment was ordered to the West Indies, and in little more than a year and a half, poor fellow, he died of yellow fever.

The consols did not turn up. I suppose he was extravagant. He must have sold his stock.

We had acted for the best, however, and did not regret it much, although he had been a very heavy item in the expenses of our little household for upwards of a year. He liked ducks and peas, and asparagus and oysters, and drank a ridiculous quantity of port. However, let us bear lightly on his weaknesses, and if he took no care of his money, let us hope that he did at least of his spiritual interests.

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