story of a shepherd who was distressed because he had accidentally swallowed a little whey during Lent, but had no hesitation as to robbing and murdering travellers; and I remember to have read of another superstitious humbug, a brigand, who was captured not many years ago, with a variety of sacred medals round his neck. They were removed to make room for a rope!

This contemptible homage, which vice offers to virtue, and which makes virtue feel very uncomfortable, these squeaks and grunts from the obesities of the swine, these base coins put into the alms-bag, are very comically sad! I recall that in the olden days, when the candidates addressed the electors from "the hustings," a very rich but mean individual was asked when he came forward to speak, "Who sent that corked port wine to the hospital?” He was not half so large-hearted as the man who, whenever he stole a goose, gave away the giblets in charity.

Finally, before we leave these pious impostors, I must express my disrespect and disbelief with regard to those persons, male and female, who are perpetually inventing new religions, and who introduce their compositions to the public with the easy assurance, and the sense of superior merit, with which a milliner presents to her customers the last sweet thing in bonnets. They seem to think that truth has been lying through the ages at the bottom of a well, which they have recently discovered, and that no one else has the key of the pump. The critics, how

ever, who are so rude and outspoken, and so fastidious concerning facts, have obtruded the remark that these discoveries have been of frequent occurrence, from the time when St. Paul inquired, "How is this, brethren, that every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation?" to the enlistment of the Salvation Army; that we have been favoured in England with more than two hundred of these infallible manifestations in as many years; but that it is somewhat difficult, as they differ from and contradict each other, to make a selection of the fittest. Sir Walter Scott writes in one of his letters of "a foolish old man, who has spent his life in finding out a north-west passage to Heaven, and after trying many sects, has settled down in what he calls the Universal Church of Christ, which consists of himself, his housekeeper, one of his maids, and a foot-boy. The butler is said to be in a hopeful way, but is not quite converted."

XXI.

OUR SPORTS AND GAMES.

Gain and Loss-Less Cruelty-Reigns of Elizabeth and MaryBaiting of Bears and Bulls - Proceedings in Parliament Scene at Madrid - Hunting: the most Popular of all our Sports -The Meet - The Find-Incidents of the Chase.

HE who is trying to learn Solon's lesson, Selfknowledge, who like a wise trader periodically examines his creditor and debtor accounts, who scrutinizes his own character, as a judge scrutinizes a horse at a show, and notes alike his merits and defects, and then compares the "bad" marks with the "good' ("I was so many by honours, and so many by tricks,” I heard a witty school-girl say, when she brought a prize to her home); he who is in the habit of thinking honestly about himself, will be restrained from arrogance. Alone with his conscience, he must confess, as even the best of men have confessed, “I am not better than my fathers." We laud and magnify our civilization and our scientific attainments, the March of Intellect is accompanied by brass bands of stupendous power, but are we in our generation better than our fathers? In a few seconds we can announce a visit to friends hundreds of miles away, and we can travel to them fifty, instead of ten, miles per hour. Are we better men on our arrival than those who journeyed by coach and by chaise? The

soldiers who shall fight with the most deadly explosives, the sailors who man the ironclad, cannot be braver than the heroes of Waterloo and Trafalgar. Gold pens and type-writers have not as yet produced, either in prose or in poetry, compositions more excellent than those which were written with the quill of the goose. The Old Masters may still say "Seniores priores to the young. Phidias and Polycletus

would be in ecstasies (of mirth) with our statues, but they would not be moved with envy.

There is loss and gain, compensation and discount,

"Multa ferunt anni venientes commoda secum,
Multa recedentes adimunt,"

vicissitudes and alternations, the old order changeth, and giveth place to the new, but all have bounds, which they cannot pass. If in some of our habits and systems we seem to make improvement, in others we simultaneously deteriorate. Sometimes prosperity mars, and adversity not seldom makes, the man.

This law is of general application, and these thoughts came into my mind, accordingly, when I began to consider what I should say to you concerning our Sports and Games, and to observe the striking manifestations, which for good or evil are connected with them.

Certainly, we may congratulate ourselves, that there is a less amount of cruelty, and in the suppression of bear-baiting and bull-baiting, man-fighting, dog-fighting, and cock-fighting, we are better than our fathers. We read that when Queen Elizabeth was entertained at Kenilworth by her favourite min

ister, the Earl of Leicester, part of the entertainment consisted of contests between bears and dogs. Thirteen bears and a large number of mastiffs were provided for this Royal diversion; and the historian, Robert Laneham, relates that "it was a sport very pleasant to see the bear with his pink eyes leering after his enemy's approach, the nimbleness and weight of the dog to take his advantage, and the force and experience again of the bear to avoid his assaults; if he were bitten in one place, how he would pinch in another to get free; if he were taken once, then what shift, with biting, with clawing, with roaring, tossing, and tumbling, he would work to wind himself from them; and when he was loose, to shake his ears once or twice, with the blood and the slaver about his physiognomy, was a great relief."

And again, when Queen Mary visited her sister during her confinement at Hatfield House, the royal ladies were entertained with a grand baiting of bulls and bears, with which they declared themselves "right well contented."

Little more than two hundred years ago, Pepys denounced bull-baiting as "a very rude and nasty pleasure," when one of the dogs was tossed into his box.

Not a hundred years ago, a bill was introduced into the Commons for the suppression of this practice. Mr. Wyndham pleaded that it would be depriving the people of their amusements, and in spite of the sarcasm of Courtenay, the earnestness of Wilberforce, and the eloquence of Sheridan, "the House