of huge angular rents in garments. We are nearing the river-will he really gain it ?-Ha! they have run into him on the very bank, and he falls like Priam on his own threshold. Look back, we are alone of men in the field; though here, scarcely two seconds behind us, come Sir Melton, the Squire, Jim Tops, and another, over the last fence. Rush in ;-let us save something of the fox, if only the brush. That's it, grab him; he is nearly in two already: hold him high over your head or you'll lose him again. I would 'whoop' if I had a forte sound left in me, but we will leave that to the Squire, whose chest is the chest of Stentor. Listen to his shout, shrill and triumphant as an Indian's over a scalp. Here is Jim, he will keep the hounds off for you; and-there-I think we have fairly earned that we may throw ourselves on the ground and pant beside the panting pack. What with their loud breath, and ours, and that of the horses now arrived on the scene, the soundand the cloud of steam too-is even as of a junction-station with many trains starting at once.

Loud are the praises and congratulations from the Squire no trace of jealousy in his open look and hearty words; though I fancy I do detect a little in Sir Melton's remarks on the subject, which is perhaps not altogether unnatural. And here comes up Jim to us where we lie, with something in his face more like admiration than any look that I ever saw there before. He offers us the brush; well, you are the stranger to the Bullfinchshire country, and there are no ladies out, and the compliment is not ill-deserved; I think you may very fairly accept it. We will remunerate Jim presently; so shall we screw up the vernier of his respect for us to yet many higher degrees of temperature; SO shall the 'wooden horse' stand no longer in his contempt, and the 'Law bless you' be eliminated from his sentiments on our character.

And now up from the grass, friend, lest we mar the good effect of the day on our constitutions.

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The hounds are going off again to draw Cold-Harbour Spinney; but we, I think, have done enough for glory and for exercise, and may well go home to our book and our arm-chair, the laurels on which we can now satisfactorily repose. Herein pray notice another advantage which we footmen have gained. These our friends who subsidize horses to do their work for them, require a whole day for the acquisition of their own due exercise; we, economizing in horseflesh, economize also in time; our 'healthful play' is already sufficient for the day, and we return fresh and vigorous to our 'books and work' until the evening a line of action which the great moralist of youth himself would have prescribed for us. Come along, then, here is a shower beginning; it will do us no harm so long as we are in brisk, warm motion, and keep up an antidotic moisture in the ἱδρὼς ἀνδρεία ; nor till the waters from above the firmament are no longer kept at bay by those from below, need we fear colds and rheumatisms and the ills to which sodden flesh is heir.

Confess your obligations to me for inducing you to don those knickerbockers for our run, in lieu of the ordinary pantaloon of daily life. Just reflect what would be now the state of trousers after splashing ankle-deep through those water-meadows, to say nothing of the ploughed and harrowed mud crossed earlier in the day. They would resemble curtains with the perpendicular movement, which drop from the ceiling by reason of weights disposed along their lower edge; and would now be hanging in soaking and flapping festoons many wrinkles deep on our insteps, heavy as the ankle-irons of a prisoner. I sincerely trust-don't you?-that this fashion of lower gear is coming into general adoption, along with beards and a few other common-sensible arrangements for personal comfort; for, indeed, why we should heap unnecessary coverings over limbs of activity which Nature especially made hardy that their motions might need the less incumbrance, while, with contra

dictory perversity, we most unthankfully discard the liberal clothing which her foresight has provided for more delicate and vital parts,-has long been a double mystery to me. If this is civilization, give me back barbarismprovided always there be no e in the word. When I shall hear, on the one hand, of suritis as a disease of the same nature as bronchitis, or that the shin has immediate connexion with the lungs or other vital organs; and see it proved on the other that beards impede any natural action of the throat or mouth-then will I see wisdom in this interchange of inconvenience which has long been customary between the chin and the calf of the leg. You object to the name of these our garments-well, it is rather suggestive of pale faces, nasal twangs, and copious expectorations, but surely advantages such as theirs would carry off any name short of Bourbon or San-ko-lin-tsin.

the one joke of the village, on the strength of which all its inhabitants are in their own esteem established wits, and plume themselves on knowing a thing or two more than the duller world outside the parish bounds. Come in; that advertisement in the window will just suit our emergency-'Pale Ale, per 8d. bottle'-a common but somewhat involved construction of sentence; eminently classical though, when one comes to consider it; thus Horace, 'Per te deos oro.' A snug little bar-parlour with arm-chairs at the fire, and a plump landlady several sizes too large for it. Look in the chimney-glass, and see what a fine healthy ruffian you are after your race-though perhaps this specimen is more calculated to exhibit the

ruffianliness than the health. Small blame to a man if, beholding his face in this glass, he straightway forget what manner of man he was.

arm

Blessed be the Alderman of Cripplegate who invented chairs; light lie the earth on his turtle-fed ashes! What a portrait one could draw of that eminent philanthropist and universal benefactor!-Rotund and ruby-visaged, full of lip and moist of eye, as, newly returned at night from high feast with his company, and clad now in the dressing-gown and slippers of the period, the massive gold chain of office just laid aside from his neck, the equally massive carbuncle still brilliant in his nose,he skirmishingly and complacently added up items in the day's gains before turning in to bed, over a blazing fire and a final composer of spiced canary or sackposset, and settled himself with paternal satisfaction into the warm embrace of the offspring of his genius. And these are no degenerate descendants of that original ancestor, unless, as is not impossible, our appetite for such food is stronger just now, and less discriminating than usual. Here we can sit awhile and talk over the morning's run. I am sure you will agree with me that if its advantages and pleasures were better known, this our method of seeing the sport would be much more generally adopted. It stands to reason theoretically, and we have just reduced to practical proof, that across an average English country of hedgerows or stiffer fences, of steep hills and deep arable fields, there must constantly occur obstacles which are much less to a man, light of body and gifted with hands for climbing, than to a heavy quadruped, uvug and unversatile in the feet, swift only on comparatively level ground, and not always very sure even there. A man can follow such smaller animals as foxes and dogs, not indeed with a horse's approach to their speed, but with more than a horse's aptitude for making their track his track. We cannot often hope for a repetition of to-day's luck'; that turn of the

fox under the down was worth half a mile to us; but a short cut is at least as available to us as to our mounted competitors; nay, having nothing but ourselves to think for, we have perhaps a better chance of detecting such an opportunity than many an indifferent and embarrassed horseman of my acquaintance. On the main question of speed, remember that an ordinary man of moderately athletic habits can run his mile any day in six or seven minutes;-give him that time and distance to catch an important express train, and see if he wont do it. Now let such an one train a little-which word, however fearinspiring to nervous mothers, is nothing more than the conventional expression for the process of acquiring unto himself the best and most vigorous state of health possible let him train a little, and he will keep up the same or a slightly inferior average pace for five or six miles; and there are not many runs in a season in any country, of which he would not, with such powers, see the best part. If he select his meets judiciously and avoid open country,

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he may often thus enjoy nearly as good sport as his wealthy or extravagant neighbour for whom two hunters bound beneath the alternate saddle. Already, however, it is but seldom that I indulge in this my pedestrian propensity, to find myself the only one in the field thus pursuing health and sport; with many a casual companion in perseverance have I crossed a difficult country, aided and aiding with mutual encouragements and pattings on the back, ended, oftener than otherwise, in mutual congratulations on success. Doesn't it rejoice you to find this England of our day becoming a much more running England than heretofore, and given to athletic habits of all kinds in a daily advancing degree? Be sure that it is this which is now taking away the reproach · if, indeed, it was ever fully deserved

that we were an unmilitary nation; and is adding to the more solid virtues of our character that élan in which our nearest neighbours have hitherto boasted their one superiority.

And so homewards.

T. G. F.

HE Ursa Major of astronomy

THE

never sets in English latitudes. In the same way, the Great Bear of English literature has never sunk below the horizon. The old interest still attaches to Dr. Johnson, and to everything connected with him. Boswell's book is still the most readable volume in the language. Every contribution of fresh matter which illustrates the familiar subject is sure to be eagerly welcomed. The old man of Bolt-court will never be forgotten. For his sake Fleet-street is classic ground, the 'Mitre' is a consecrated place of entertainment. His whims and his ways, his might and his weakness, his opinions and his prejudices, will go down to the latest posterity. Unborn generations will take Bozzy from the shelf, as we do in our best and in our worst humours, for reading. We love it at our best times, when we wish to feed the hours of enjoyment with what is most enjoyable; and we I love it at our worst moments of lassitude and pain, when we seek for the best recreation, because nothing but the best is then endurable. It might have been supposed that so many years after the death of Johnson there was nothing left to be told about him. Successive gleaners might be expected to have thoroughly exhausted the welltrodden field. The mine, as one thought, had been worked out, the ore smelted, and the first refuse even re-smelted over again long ago. But fortunately for us, it is not so. A new shaft has been sunk, and much valuable produce brought up to the surface, and into the light of day. It is not, indeed, in Dr. Johnson's name that the workings are carried

on;

but he claims manorial rights, as it were, over all adjacent lands, and a large royalty is always payable to his memory by those who undertake the biography of any of his cotemporaries or friends. It is in the vindication of his friend,

H. L. P., now undertaken by her learned and able counsel, Mr. Hayward, that the latest diggings have been opened, and that all the ancient interest about the time has been so well and so successfully renewed. One part of the life of the fair initialist was so completely involved with that of Johnson that their memories are almost inseparable; and it is no disparagement to the lady to affirm that but for her known connexion with him, few people would in the middle of this nineteenth century be caring to hear or know anything more about her. The young lady of ancient family, the rich brewer's consort, the singing-master's wife, the widow of both, would now excite little interest if her claims to attention rested solely on her own literary performances and social triumphs. But for Johnson, it is pretty clear that the memory of Mrs. Thrale Piozzi would require no defence, and for the simple reason that there would be little memory of her at all. Her offences, such as they were, would have been so completely buried in oblivion that it would have been an useless and unnecessary task to resuscitate them for the purposes of a tardy and posthumous re-hearing and acquittal.

Stating it indeed in words, which correctly convey the main facts of the case, it is difficult at first to understand the enormity of the lady's crime, or the commotion excited by it among her friends and in the polite world of the time, at the period of its perpetration. The relict of a great brewer, whom she had never loved, married an Italian gentleman who had sung upon the stage, who afterwards gave lessons in music, who was evidently no vulgar fortune-hunter, and who had saved enough of his own professional earnings to spend the remainder of his days in the enjoy ment of single independence, if he

1861.]

had been minded to do so. There was no great disparity of years— Signor Piozzi was a sensible wellconducted man, and Mrs. Thrale did no pecuniary mischief to her family by her first husband, for they were well provided for, and in that respect beyond the reach of injury. She broke no commandment, and she violated no municipal law. It was a matter of taste and feeling rather than of absolute right or wrong. As she characteristically said of it herself, writing in 1782- A woman of passable person, ancient family, respectable character, uncommon talents, and three thousand a year, has a right to think herself any man's equal, and has nothing to seek but return of affection from whatever partner she pitches on. To marry for love would therefore be rational in me, who want no advancement of birth or fortune; and till I am in love, I will not marry, nor perhaps then.' For ourselves, we must confess that we never liked the second marriage, and the more we hear of it the less we like it. As regards her daughters, her best excuse is one which otherwise tells with great force against her general character as a true and affectionate woman. union with the ex-singer separated her from her children; and the necessity they were under of seeking another home was deprived of what in another case might have been its ugliest features, by the hard fact that the mother never had loved her daughters at any time. The Italian robbed them of no affection, for there was none to lose. And this we believe, while it no doubt to a considerable extent removes some of the gravest objections to the second marriage, offers a key to her general nature, by exhibiting in the strongest and most repulsive form the vanity of mind and the craving for admiration which, in spite of other remarkable and even amiable qualities, rendered her incapable of any very deep or elevating passion, and even prevented the ordinary develop ment of parental and domestic affection.

Her

For a matronly woman to rush

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The

into a fresh matrimonial engagement with the frantic and selfabandoning enthusiasm of an illregulated school-girl pining for a lover, was not a pleasant or decorous spectacle for her friends. Affronted by it they certainly had no right to be. Dismayed and disappointed in their previous estimate of her, however, they well might be; and it is no matter for wonder if permanent alterations of opinion and serious estrangements took place. In such cases the greater the former friendship the wider will be the breach when made; and we freely concede the lady's right to marry again, and to marry whom she pleased, claiming only for her friends an equal right to change their estimate of her, and even to withdraw their friendship if they thought fit to do so. part taken by Johnson at this crisis has been made the subject of frequent comment, and much observation has been made upon his conduct and that of Mrs. Piozzi in relation to it. It appears from the very valuable letters now published, that all previous opinions have been pronounced upon an imperfect state of the facts; and we are bound to admit that the lady had, on the whole, the best of the correspondence on this occasion between the moral philosopher and herself, and that she wrote with kindness and temper under circumstances of violent provocation. Before, however, availing ourselves of these new materials, we must go back a little to look at some of the antecedents of the matrimonial culprit now put upon her trial again so long after the date of her alleged offence.

From the autobiographical memoirs, now for the first time printed, we get Mrs. Piozzi's own account of her girlhood. She was of an ancient and well connected family established in Wales, whose name of Salusbury was supposed to be derived from a certain Adam de Saltzsburg who came to England with William the Conqueror. She was a clever child, a good deal petted, a fondled favourite, and seems very early to have become