laugh to the wild ass as he goes braying unharnessed by. But look there! Arabian blood, and British bone! Not bred in and into the death of all the fine strong animal spirits-but blood intermingled and interfused by twenty crosses, nature exulting in each successive produce, till her power can no farther go, and in yonder glorious gray,

"Gives the world assurance of a horse!"
"A horse!

A horse! A kingdom for a horse!"

Form the three hundred into squadron, or squadrons, and in the hand of each rider a sabre alone, none of your lances, all bare his breast but for the silver-laced blue, the gorgeous uniform of the hussars of England,-confound all cuirasses and cuirassiers,-let the trumpet sound a charge, and ten thousand of the proudest of the Barbaric chivalry be opposed with spear and scimitar,—and through their snow-ranks will the three hundred go like thawsplitting them into dissolution with the noise of thunder.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating of it; and where, we ask, were the British cavalry ever overthrown? And how could the great north-country horse-coupers perform their contracts, but for the triumphs of the turf? Blood-blood there must be, either for strength, or speed, or endurance. The very heaviest cavalry-the Life Guards and the Scots Grays, and all other dragoons, must have blood. But without racing and fox-hunting, where could it be found? Such pastimes nerve one of the arms of the nation when in battle; but for them 'twould be palsied. What better education, too, not only for the horse, but rider, before playing a bloodier game in his first war campaign? Thus he becomes demicorpsed with the noble. animal; and what easy, equable motion to him, is afterwards a charge over a wide level plain, with nothing in the way but a few regiments of flying Frenchmen! The hills and dales of merry England have been the best riding-school to her gentlemen-her gentlemen who have not lived at home at ease-but with Paget, and Stewart, and Seymour, and Cotton, and Somerset, and Vivian, have left their hereditary halls, and all the peaceful pas

times pursued among the sylvan scenery, to try the mettle of their steeds, and cross swords with the vaunted Gallic chivalry; and still have they been in the shock victorious; witness the skirmish that astonished Napoleon at Saldanha—the overthrow that uncrowned him at Waterloo !

"Well, do you know, that after all you have said, Mr. North, I cannot understand the passion and the pleasure of fox-hunting? It seems to me both cruel and dangerous."

Cruelty! Is there cruelty in laying the rein on their necks, and delivering them up to their high condition— for every throbbing vein is visible-at the first full burst of that maddening cry, and letting loose to their delight the living thunderbolts? Danger? What danger but of breaking their own legs, necks, or backs, and those of their riders? And what right have you to complain of that, lying all your length, a huge hulking fellow, snoring and snorting half asleep on a sofa sufficient to sicken a whole street? What though it be but a smallish, reddishbrown, sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, and passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue? After the first tallyho, Reynard is rarely seen, till he is run in upon-once perhaps in the whole run, skirting a wood, or crossing a common. It is an idea that is pursued, on a whirlwind of horses to a storm of canine music,— worthy, both, of the largest lion that ever leaped among a band of Moors, sleeping at midnight by an extinguished fire on the African sands. There is, we verily believe it, nothing foxy in the fancy of one man in all that glorious field of three hundred. Once off and awaywhile wood and welkin rings-and nothing is feltnothing is imaged in that hurricane flight, but scorn of all obstructions, dikes, ditches, drains, brooks, palings, canals, rivers, and all the impediments reared in the way of so many rejoicing madmen, by nature, art, and science, in an inclosed, cultivated, civilized, and Christian country. There they go-prince and peer, baronet and squire, the nobility and gentry of England, the flower of the men of the earth, each on such steed as Pollux never reined, nor Philip's warlike son-for could we imagine Bucephalus here, ridden by his own tamer, Alexan

der would be thrown out during the very first burst, and glad to find his way dismounted to a village alehouse for a pail of meal and water. Hedges, trees, groves, gardens, orchards, woods, farmhouses, huts, halls, mansions, palaces, spires, steeples, towers, and temples, all go wavering by, each demigod seeing, or seeing them not, as his winged steed skims or labours along, to the swelling or sinking music, now loud as a near regimental band, now faint as an echo. Far and wide over the country are dispersed the scarlet runners-and a hundred villagers pour forth their admiring swarms, as the main current of the chase roars by, or disparted runlets float wearied and all astray, lost at last in the perplexing woods. Crash goes the timber of the five-barred gate,-away over the ears, flies the exrough rider in a surprising somerset-after a succession of stumbles, down is the gallant gray on knees and nose, making sad work among the fallow-friendship is a fine thing, and the story of Damon and Pythias most affecting indeed-but Pylades eyes Orestes on his back sorely drowned in sludge, and tenderly leaping over him as he lies, claps his hand to his ear, and with a "hark forward, tan-tivy !" leaves him to remount, lame and at leisure

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and ere the fallen has risen and shook himself, is round the corner of the white village-church, down the dell, over the brook, and close on the heels of the straining pack, all a-yell up the hill crowned by the Squire's Folly. Every man for himself, and God for us all," is the devout and ruling apothegm of the day. If death befall, what wonder? since man and horse are mortal; but death loves better a wide soft bed with quiet curtains and darkened windows in a still room, the clergyman in the one corner with his prayers, and the physician in another with his pills, making assurance doubly sure, and preventing all possibility of the dying Christian's escape. Let oak branches smite the too slowly stooping skull, or rider's back not timely levelled with his steed's; let faithless bank give way, and bury in the brook; let hidden drain yield to fore-feet and work a sudden wreck; let old coal-pit, with briery mouth, betray; and roaring river bear down man and horse to banks unscaleable by the very Welsh goat; let duke's or earl's son go sheer over a

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quarry fifty feet deep, and as many high; yet, "without stop or stay, down the rocky way" the hunter train flows on; for the music grows fiercer and more savage,-lo! all that remains together of the pack, in far more dreadful madness than hydrophobia, leaping out of their skins, under insanity from the scent, now strong as stink, for Vulpes can hardly now make a crawl of it; and ere he, they, whipper-in, or any one of the other three demoniacs, have time to look in one another's splashed faces, he is torn into a thousand pieces, gobbled up in the general growl; and smug, and smooth, and dry, and warm, and cozey, as he was an hour and twenty-five minutes ago exactly, in his furze-bush in the cover,-he is now piecemeal in about thirty distinct stomachs; and is he not, pray, well off for sepulture?

SOLILOQUY ON THE ANNUALS.

(Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1829.)

PERIODICAL literature-how sweet is the name! "Tis a type of many of the most beautiful things and events in nature; or say, rather, that they are types of it—both the flowers and the stars. As to flowers, they are the prettiest periodicals ever published in folio-the leaves are wirewove and hot-pressed by Nature's self; their circulation is wide over all the land; from castle to cottage they are regularly taken in ; as old age bends over them, his youth is renewed; and you see childhood poring upon them, prest close to its very bosom. Some of them are ephemeral, and their contents are exhaled between the rising and setting sun. Once a-week others break through their green, pink, or crimson cover; and how delightful, on the seventh day, smiles in the sunshine the Sabbath flowerthe only Sunday publication perused without blame by the most religious-even before morning prayer. Each month, indeed, throughout the whole year, has its own flowerperiodical. Some are annual, some biennial, some triennial, and there are perennials that seem to live for ever -and yet are still periodical-though our love will not allow us to know when they die, and phoenix-like reappear from their own ashes. So much for flowers-typifying or typified;-leaves emblematical of pages-buds of binding -dew-veils of covers-and the wafting away of bloom and fragrance like the dissemination of fine feelings, bright fancies, and winged thoughts!

The flowers are the periodicals of the earth-the stars are those of heaven. With what unfailing regularity do the numbers issue forth! Hesperus and Lucifer! ye are