foot at Hyde-park Corner, it seems as if it wanted to shake hands with the turnpike at Kensington.

On such a horse you will mostly see harness of the right sorteverything about it that is wanted for the particular horse, and nothing that is not. No gagging-rein for mere show, or want of one if it is required: no driving without a bearing-rein, because it has been the rage to drive every heavy-headed brute without one-nor one put on if he goes better without. Such an owner could probably give you a good reason for all he has about the turn-out, or for omitting anything that is not there; and so should every man be able to do, for anything he does with horses; and take them on an average, I will back the Whitechapel and dog cart owners against the Tilbury drivers for knowing the right side of the road, so far as horse matters are concerned. Mem.--I wonder who ever saw a tailor in a well appointed Whitechapel, or who has not seen scores in a badly appointed Tilbury; and it is but fair to say, sometimes in a good one also.

THE OMNIBUS HORSE.

These most convenient public carriages have called into request a description of horse that has been almost a stranger to us during the last fast coaching age, but are such as were in use in many of our best horsed coaches, when 6 miles an hour was the average of travelling with them, taking long distances all through. When omnibuses first started they had some difficulty in finding the proper horse for their work. The fresh baroucher was, of course, too costly, and the worn-out one did not do at all; in short, no leggy horse will. They want horses that are quick in their motions, stop readily, and, like a rabbit, get to their pace at once. The long-legged horse cannot do this, and the frequent stoppages make them knock their legs to pieces. These stoppages punish horses exceedingly till they get accustomed to them, galling their withers sorely. After this, the omnibus horse in general leads as good a life as most working horses do. Judging by the horses, we must, however, except the Blackwall, Bow, and Stratford ones; for some reasons, they are mostly a sad, starved, wretched-looking lot; and, as it will be found is generally the case where the horses look bad, the coachmen and cads are a querish lot too. When we compare the situation of an omnibus coachman and cad with the (once existing) one of coachman and guard on the road, the difference, both in emolument and comfort, is wide indeed. Í suppose the omnibus owners pay their men as much as they can afford, and that is but little, when we consider these men drive from fifty to sixty miles a day-not as a road coachman did, in five or six hours, for some of the omnibus coachmen are thirteen hours on their boxes: they are allowed scarcely any perquisites, and are very closely watched, that they make no more; and certain deductions are even made besides. Whatever the public may think, few men earn their bread harder than these coachmen and cads, or conductors. It is true they are generally a class of men very inferior to the former road coachmen and guards-so they will ever be. The occupation is disagreeable, the pay bad; and, as if it were wished to make it absolutely degrading, they are forced to publicly exhibit a badge of servi

tude; whereas, obliging them to carry it about them, and produce it if called for, would answer every purpose. Should they refuse, the man who was driving omnibus No. -, at such an hour, must be produced by his employer, on any complaint being made.

THE LONDON DRAY AND CART HORSE.

This animal has not, I imagine, varied much from what he was a hundred years ago. He is employed for the same purposes-in the same situations; consequently, size, weight, and strength were, and still are, the chief things wanted in him. His price has, however, varied considerably, as he is to be got at, I should say, about a third less than fifty or sixty years back, when, I have been told, eighty pounds was no unusual price for a dray or distiller's horse. If we were to judge by the docility shown in these monster animals, we might be led to imagine their natural dispositions to be better than the high-bred horse; but I do not believe this to be the fact: their quietude proceeds from their being less irritated than other horses; they are never really distressed, or, as is the case with the racehorse or hunter, punished to make exertions when they are. Their spirits are not so high, nor is their blood ever got up like that of the horse at fast work: so they are never thoroughly excited. A good deal depends also on the men who drive and attend them. They, unlike the coachman or groom, have no pride in seeing a horse fast at his work they are slow themselves; and provided the horse obeys the motion of the whip, and "come 'ither who's" or "gee who's,' or backs the dray, they do not care if he is half an hour doing it. This accounts for the docility of the dray and cart horse.

THE HEARSE HORSE.

"Aye," as Curran said by the coach, "this is the horse after all." After all what? Why, after all the pride, pomp, pageantry, and in still greater proportion, the care, anxiety, and heartlessness of this world is over with him or her he carries to the last abode: his step of parade is the same, whether employed to convey emperors or kings to meet the adulation of a court, or the corpse of husband or wife from the bereaved partner. What though he conveys the faded remains of beauty or of worth to their final resting-place! Those assembled at this mockery of woe will join the crowded rout in the evening, without casting a thought on him or her who had often opened the gay and hospitable portals to welcome them as guests. But so it is.

I know not if I have rightly sketched the characteristics of metropolitan horses, but experience tells me I am correct in those of metropolitan friends; aye, and of the generality of friends.

H. H.

LITERATURE.

THE ANGLER'S COMPANION TO THE RIVERS AND LOCHS OF ScorLAND. By Thomas Tod Stoddart. Blackwood and Sons, London and Edinburgh, 1847.-Writers on the art and mystery of the angle may adopt as their motto, if in want of such a convenience, that familiar hex

ameter

"Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ?"

Fox-hunting used to command the pens of literary Nimrods, and the turf is not without its considerable tomes-good, bad, and indifferent ; but at the rate the anglers are cultivating Cadmus, we shall presently have a library on the subtleties of the rod and line. It is not long since we had to notice a volume on the subject by an anonymous author; we have one now at our elbow by Mr. Tod Stoddart--a writer quite full of the enthusiasm of his craft, and, no doubt, an able professor of the science to which his talents have been devoted. He is, however, chiefly the companion of those who adopt Caledonia "stern and wild" as the scene of their adventure. In the Tweed or Teviot he is as much at home as any native-salmon or trout. His theory and practice are evidently the results of long experience and scientific conclusion. As an angler to read he is singularly happy; when deepest in the sublimities of fly construction he is never tiresome; when most elaborate in the gymnastics of his art he never bores you. His book is certainly an unusually stout octavo, 431 pages; but it is filled by one who indited good matter. We had marked several passages for extract, but the limit of our space compels us to confine our notice to one. It is marked by less of the didactic than generally distinguishes his style; it does his taste not the less credit :

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Fly-fishing, considered as a branch of the angler's art, possesses peculiar advantages. As an exercise, it is healthy, and just to the proper degree exciting. It braces the muscles, enlivens the spirits, gives rise to an agreeable alternation of hopes and fears, calls into activity the judgment as well as the fancy, the good taste and discrimination of the artist, not less than his ideal and creative powers. It affords room, also, as has often been remarked, for the display of elegant motions and graceful attitudes-impersonations of earnestness and intense enthusiasm, of hope, of anxiety, of joy, of disappointment, of admiration, of pity, of content, of love, of holy feeling, and of crowning felicity.

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Of

Is it not, for instance, in the attitude of hope that the angler stands, while in the act of heaving out his flies over some favourite cast? hope increased, when he beholds, feeding within reach of his line, the monarch of the stream? But now, mark him, he has dropt the hook cautiously and skilfully just above the indicated spot; the fish, scarcely breaking the surface, has seized it. A fast, firm hold it has, but the tackle is fine, and the trout strong and active. Look! how the expression of his features is undergoing a change. There is still hope, but

The

mingled with it are traces of anxiety-of fear itself. His attitudes, too, are those of a troubled and distempered man. Ha! all is well. worst is over. The strong push for liberty has been made, and failed. Desperate as that summerset was, it has proved unsuccessful. The tackle-knot and barb-is sufficient. Look now at the angler. Hope with him is stronger than anxiety, and joy too beams forth under his eyelids; for lo! the fish is showing symptoms of distress. No longer it threatens to exhaust the winch-line; no longer it combats with the rapids; no more it strives with frantic fling or wily plunge to disengage the hook. It has lost all heart-almost all energy. The fins, paralysed and powerless, are unable for their task. So far from regulating its movements, they cannot even sustain the balance of the fish. Helpless and hopeless, it is drawn ashore, upturning, in the act of submission, its starred and gleamy flanks. The countenance of the captor-his movements (they are those which the soul dictates) are all joyous and selfcongratulatory. But the emotion, strongly depicted though it be, is short-lived. It gives way successively to the feelings of admiration and pity of admiration as excited on contemplating the almost incomparable beauty of the captive, its breadth and depth, the harmony of its proportions, as well as the richness and variety of its colours of pity, as called forth in accordance with our nature-an unconscious, uncontrollable emotion, which operates with subduing effect on the triumph of the

moment.

"And now, in their turn, content and thankfulness reign in the heart and develop themselves on the countenance of the angler; now haply he is impressed with feelings of adoring solemnity stirred up by some scene of unlooked-for grandeur, or the transit of some sublime phenomenon. I say nothing of the feelings of disappointment, anger, envy, and jealousy, which sometimes find their way into the bosom, and are pourtrayed on the features even of the worthiest and best-tempered of our craft. Too naturally they spring up and blend themselves with our better nature; yet well it is that they take no hold on the heart, scorching it may be true, but not consuming its day of happiness.

Hence it is, from the very variety of emotions which successively occupy the mind, from their blendings and transitions, that angling derives its pleasures; hence, it holds precedence as a sport with men of thoughtful and ideal temperament; hence, poets, sculptors, and philosophers--the sons and worshippers of genius-have entered, heart and hand, into its pursuit. Therefore it was that Thomson, Burns, Scott, and Hogg, and, in our present day, Wilson and Wordsworth, exchanged eagerly the grey goose-quill and the companionship of books for the taper wand and the discourse, older than Homer's measures, of streams and cataracts. Therefore it was that Paley left his meditative home, and Davy his tests and crucibles, and Chantrey his moulds, models, and chisel-work-each and all to rejoice and renovate themselves; to gather new thoughts and energies, a fresh heart and vigorous hand, in the exercise of that pastime which is teeming with philosophy."

THE TROUT FLIES OF DEVON AND CORNWALL-WHEN AND HOW TO USE THEM. Nettleton, Plymouth.-A small work, of a more general character than its title would seem to indicate, being, in fact, a treatise compiled, rather than written, on the de omnibus rebus et qui bus

dam aliis principle. We have, for instance, a chatty kind of review of all the eminent anglers that ever lived, from Solomon down to Christopher North-Isaac Walton, of course, included; though, by the way, he knew little or nothing of fly-fishing, the professed purpose of Mr. Soltau's labours. There are certainly a few plates of flies, with yet more scanty elucidations; considering the author himself disparages his prints, the accompaniments might have been allowed more tone. We defy any man to make up his flies from the descriptions, if he is not to trust to the drawings. The book, in short, has disappointed us; it is neither as instructive nor as amusing as so favoured a district should have furnished. The grand mistake, or defect, has been in the writer brushing up all sorts of used-up intelligence, instead of confining himself to the flag he fights under the freshness and attractions of his own streams. "Local information," he says, "is at all times most valuable to the fisherman; without it, his money is often wasted and his patience sorely taxed.” Agreed, it is; but why, then, did he not act up to his text, and make his task and ours far more agreeable? His sin must be on his own head.

THE PEOPLE'S JOURNAL. Saunders, 69, Fleet-street. It is always with gratification that we acknowledge a call upon us-in the capacity of public journalists-to review works of a social and popular character. The philosophy of our life, as well as our literature, is thus written: "Nullius addictus jurare in verba magistri." For this reason, whether a volume solicit our notice with an introduction on the title-page from the most distinguished author of the day, or come unpresented, in anonymous humility, we offer it our greeting-our welcome if, as it should seem to us, its purpose be good. This is the case with the work before us: it is essentially a popular work, without being anarchical-properties so continually confounded in modern policy. The design of the "People's Journal" is stated to be " a combination of amusement, general literature, and instruction, with an earnest and business-like inquiry into the best means of satisfying the claims of industry." No doubt here is high ground taken, or at least sought-it is but justice to say by a path likely to lead to the end desired. This journal is a miscellany of original contributions by writers of talent--and an honest spirit. Its taste is sound, and its tone is healthy. All is not gold indeed-but there is little or no tinsel. It is customary to offer extracts to support opinions of literary productions as the merchant sets out samples of his wares. The following is in season-it harmonises with the general matter of our pages, and its policy is wholesome and true.

"There is much going on that must die out as the taste and moral feeling of the masses progress. Vulgarity and low debauch will, with this advance, gradually disappear. Thus that attraction of former days, the Epping Hunt, has sunk to the most perfect burlesque. I went to witness it a year or two ago. But where were the Lord Mayor and aldermen, who used to be there in all their glory? Where were the surrounding thousands upon thousands? On the top of the hill, near the Bald-faced Stag, stood a few carriages with ladies in them, a few gentlemen on horseback, a few venders of oranges and ginger-beer, and a few professors of the game of cock-shy, or will-pegs, ready to afford young men the opportunity of winning a snuff-box by the flinging of a stick.