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A fourth Premier kept the best shooting dogs, and is one of the best shots in England-Sir R. Peel.

A distinguished member of the late cabinet kept and keeps racehorses-Lord Stanley; and there is in the present a Minister of the highest order of talent, who from boyhood took a lead in everything to which he turned his mind; an excellent classical scholar, of refined taste, and most cultivated understanding; as a debater, the closest and cleverest in the House of Lords; remarkable for condensing more matter in fewer words than any other peer; yet with all this intellectual superiority, he is a thorough sportsman, a good shot, a first-rate whip, and one of the very best steeple-race and hunting riders in the United Kingdom. I am honoured by Lord Clanricarde's friendship; but would not descend to exaggerate in panegyric. I am sketching characters, and have to do with facts, not friendships. Crichton was not an imaginary character, nor were his biographers satellites. Lord Palmerston, a very distinguished minister and statesman, is occasionally on the turf.

If any one should doubt my ability to give instances of members of all the classes I have enumerated being sporting characters, I shall be happy to name cases in point.

This has indeed been a long digression. I was on the box of my drag, and I at first intended to have pulled up awhile; but instead of doing so, I drove after your subscribers to the Palace, Downingstreet, and the Horse Guards, &c.

There is nothing irrelevant in coupling the name of a Stanhope with coaching; and I will not quit the bench until I say a few words. of the Honourable Fitzroy S, one in whose society time had wings, and man and horse came under his influence from the moment of acquaintance, so powerful is the combination of a kind heart with popular manners; of convivial with higher talent; of tact and temper with nerve and firmness; of a fine person without vanity, and of rank without pride. Nature-and she seldom commits a forgery-had given to his countenance the impress of true nobility. Eheu! fugaces anni: I wish you had seen him when

Currus et quatuor ausus

Jungere equos, rapidisque rotis insistere victor,"

And how would "those whose souls are touched by melody" enjoy his fine manly voice giving life to the air of the "She loved her swell dragsman!" It was our charter song. I forget the original words;+ but I wrote some very indifferent ones in place of them for our meets last year. In the olden time we used to pull up for meal and water at an inn near Turnham Green, on our way home at night after a rural dinner. Six to a dozen drags, a glass of Goding's pale ale, a cigar, the song-then out! mount and away-whirr!-sometimes springing the gallant prads for the stretch of mile

"Oh! 'twas my delight on a moonlit night.”

Mathematicians like to describe circles; make acute, obtuse, and right angles; and measure distances on paper; but if not so

* Crichton was the most accomplished man of the 16th century.
+ I wish some of your correspondents would publish them in Maga.

scientific, it is much more exciting to see a man with a fine finger gauge his distance, and get four fiery horses, no two of the same opinion, out of a difficulty, and through a narrow pass, without a tangent.

With Stanhope, C. T. Jones, the beau ideal of a gentleman dragsman, Harry Stephenson, the elegant editor and glory of The Age (a Brighton coach, the best appointed in England), with Musgrave, Smith Barry (Melton Barry), Flood Sharp, &c., I cultivated my taste for teaming.

The B.D.C. Club, of London, which started with the then newfashioned, but slow, unprofessional-looking barouche, soon died a natural death, and was succeeded by the legitimate drag-drama. My confreres were, I believe, the last of their race; and one of us will ere long be ultimus Romanorum. I am not aware that there exists at present any association of aristocratic dragsmen in England.

Poor Dublin mustered up a dozen drags last summer, and some very creditable artists. The garrison (the Bays, the Greys, and 13th Light Dragoons-my old corps) turned out four, and the native performers were Messrs. Wolseley, H. O'Reily, O'Hara, Corry, Jessop, Montgomery, Boyd, R. Pym, E. Dycer, &c., proprietor of the largest equestrian depôt in Europe. The unassuming and gentlemanly manners of Mr. Dycer, and his close attention to his business, which brings him into contact with all the aristocracy of Ireland, have rendered him a universal favourite, and given him a position in society to which men in trade can never attain without those creditable adjuncts. His team (he seldom drives, though firstrate in nerve and finger) is incomparably the best actioned I ever saw and I remember Sir H. Peyton's bays, Annesley's roans, Dolphin's pyes, Barry's whites, Lord Harborough's fast browns, Russel's speedy bays, Lincoln Stanhope's greys, and Fitzroy Stanhope's dark bays. Lord Worcester and several others were also well horsed; but were all immeasurably away from Dycer's team in high and showy action: they are, however, not very fast. He keeps no horse, or even pony, that is not remarkable for kneeaction, and his stud comes nearest but yet is distanced and redistanced by the redoubtable Coventry, the phenomenon buggy horse of my old and hospitable friend James Ramsay, whose whereabouts the lovers of conviviality, regulated by good taste, well knew in London from 1822 to 1828. There never was, and I believe never will be, such a horse. Ramsay gave the Hon. T. Coventry only £150 for him; and I was with him the day he reluctantly—most reluctantly-sold him for £700 to Lord Ongley. I do not think that Coventry could do above fifteen miles an hour, so much of his time was spent in the air. No man can describe his action, unless it be Dominie Sampson, who would justly call it-" Prodigious!" There is a print of this horse yet to be had. Man, woman, and child of every rank stopped and gazed as he passed; indeed, stopped ere he came up to them. Many a box anecdote crosses o'er the spirit of my dreams; but the "light of other days" grows faint.

I had my deeply-lamented friend, Apperley (your Nimrod), with me one night, when a French nobleman, to whom malgré prudence I consigned my bunch of ribbands, discovered a stone pos with the

off fore-wheel: pace, twelve miles an hour: time, twelve at night: locality, three miles from Hampton Court. I warned him of the turn and the stone, and he told me he knew it; and so he did, like Paddy the pilot, who cried out, when he struck the rock and sprung a leak:"There it is! I tould you I knew it."

Apperley was spun over the box (he was seated behind the Gallic Phaeton), and fell between a pair of kicking wheelers, but assured us afterwards, that though bruised he would not for ten pounds have missed the summersault, as it placed his right knee with great effect on the marquis's left ear, whilst the off-side wheeler was performing a pas seul that frightened him into screams.

Alas! these reminiscences-indited to win a smile from otherscast a gloom over me. I used to find poetry a good escape-valve for melancholy, and I want the company of a friendly muse:

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A WORD OR TWO ABOUT TROUT-FISHING, TROUT-FLIES, AND TROUT-RODS; WITH A LITTLE GASTRONOMIC "ADDENDUM."

BY THE OLD FLY.

Here we are once more in the merry month of May-glorious, joyous, mirth-moving May! All nature is radiant with smiles, and decked in her gayest and most attractive garb; the thrush, the blackbird, and lark swell their tuneful throats lustily; while the haymaker and milkmaid join in rustic chorus as they wend their way homewards across the meadows.

These are amongst the many real and unalloyed enjoyments tasted of, and appreciated by, the fly-fisher. We maintain that the trout and salmon-fisher is an intellectual being. His is a mental recreation; and one that a vulgar mind knows not how to estimate. The reflective man, while pursuing this elegant pastime, is not unmindful of a kind Providence, who, while blessing him with health to walk the fields and explore the waters, exhibits in its richest and most varied form the wondrous creations of his omnipotent hand.

The scenery around the spots frequented by the angler is ever of the most enchanting description; and if the fly-fisher do not, while gazing on all that can captivate the sight, entertain feelings of gratitude to the Author of all good, why, he must be a senseless lump of clay, with whom we care not to hold communion.

With such bright examples before us as Sir Humphrey Davy and Professor Wilson, we may fairly assume that philosophy and fly-fishing go hand in hand; and if such master-minds as theirs were not above devoting their unrivalled powers to the pleasures of the gentle craft, let not the surly pedant or snarling cynic scoff at a healthful recreation, which tends to call forth man's best feelings, whilst exercising his skill and stratagem to entrap the finny inhabitants of the bubbling stream.

Amongst the professed fly-fishers of the present day, that quaint old brother of the angle, the imperishable Izaak Walton, would be accounted a muff; but no one can read his single-hearted work, if we may so term it, without a feeling akin to reverence for its author. A more charming, fascinating, and guileless publication never was framed. It is the production of a pure, simple, and honest mind; and who will assert that a good wholesome moral does not pervade this fascinating book? That the venerable Izaak was a benevolent being, no honest angler will doubt; for the man who felt as he did, and could express his feelings so unaffectedly, and with such heartfelt truthfulness, must have been at peace with his God and his fellow-men.

A fig, then, for that surly, bearish, under-bred old lexicographer, Johnson, whose coarse and libellous sarcasm has all but acquired for itself the reputation of a musty proverb; and let us really view the elegant and gentlemanly science-for it is a science, mind ye-of flyfishing in its true light. The uninitiated in matters appertaining to the fly-rod can form no idea of the long apprenticeship he must serve ere he can arrive at the honour of being a first-class man. Close observation, unwearied application, constant practice, and untiring patience, form the ground-work of future excellence. By close observation we mean the watching the innumerable changes as well as habits of the insects which at the change of seasons (we might, with truth, say of wind and weather as well) disappear, re-appear, form and transform, with a rapidity and a certainty as marvellous as true.

The countless varieties of food taken by trout from March to September should be the first object of the fly-fisher's attention. This, in point of fact, is one of the most important branches in the angler's education; and the next, in our opinion, is to make oneself thoroughly acquainted with the habits of the trout. Although the instinctive properties of these fish, as regards the manner of taking their food, is the same all over the world, yet, it is not less strange than true, that a fly which may be very taking in one river, will not be of the slightest use in another.

In visiting a strange locality, therefore, "observation" is again necessary. It will be found a good plan to cultivate the acquaintance of a resident who has a smattering of the art. Local knowledge is all but indispensable; and if the village disciple of Walton-be he squire, rector, curate, lawyer, doctor, farmer, or poacher-have a spark of the good fellowship which should ever be found amongst the fraternity of fishers, he will willingly afford every information regarding the river or stream in his neighbourhood, and, moreover, give to the visitor a sample or two of the most suitable flies for the water. In every country town, and sometimes in the villages, there is a gun or clock maker, who, by prescriptive right, sells fishing tackle. The sons or daughters, and sometimes both, dress flies after the fashion of the place and however

rudely they may be tied, the colours and materials of which they are composed are of no little value that is to say, they will be duly estimated by the real connoisseur in such matters; who, immediately on becoming possessed of these clumsy imitations, forwards to his London fly-maker, Mr. Jones, of Jermyn-street, or Mr. Bowness, of Bell-yard, as the case may be, a sample of each. The patterns being thus improved upon, and the natural fly more closely and neatly imitated, the London amateur, whose tackle is sure to be finer and better than the countryman's, beats the local piscators-squire, rector, curate, lawyer, doctor, farmer, poacher, all put together.

They marvel much that a stranger should come down and fill his creel, when they themselves can scarcely get a rise; but they have not discovered that when science is superadded to practice, the two united will ever beat the field.

We have said that

"a fly which may be very taking in one river, will not be of the slightest use in another." Different waters, therefore, may be fairly set down as different countries, where the natives of each fare in a totally dissimilar manner. John Bull is proverbial for his partiality to roasted beef; a Frenchman affections frogs; the Esquimaux, raw blubber; a Russian, train oil and tallow; and the Chinese, canine concoctions" de gustibus," &c. So, upon the same principle, the trout in Devonshire and the trout in Derbyshire feed not upon the same Ephemera.

The soil through which our rivers and streams flow may account for this; for not only have we remarked that flies in widely separated localities differ as essentially as a chesnut-horse from a horse-chesnut, but the trout themselves vary in hue and other external appearances as ostensibly as a zebra from the domestic donkey. These startling distinctions, or changes, or whatever term may be applied to this harlequinade, in the winged and finny tribe, offer too wide a field for scientific discussion for us to enter further into the subject on the present occasion. In the first place, our limits forbid the attempt; and in the next, we have not time to interfere with nature's freaks, at this moment. Here we are, as we observed at the commencement of this little paper, in the merry month of May; and upon the animus prævidet futura principle, let us see what we brethren of the angle have to look forward to in

this year of grace, 1847. As to the sport to be anticipated during the present month, we cannot predicate very favourably; the fish must of necessity be very backward this year.

The extraordinary quantity of snow which fell early in February will have materially affected the condition of the trout this year; and granting-although we by no means think it probable-that many may be taken during the present month, we opine that they will not be in full season, or fit for any well-organized table, until June. We need not tell our brothers of the craft, that snow to trout is little short, in its effects, of what prussic acid is to us bipeds-it is all but death to them—and it is long ere they recover from the effects of the flaky admixture with their native element. Every river within fifty miles of London will have been impregnated by these contributions from above.

We all know that in some rivers the fish come into season earlier than in others. This is particularly observable in the Devonshire streams; for we have taken trout in the early part of February in as prime condition

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