elbow-room for all, good hope for the industrious, and possibilities of great fortunes for the fortunate. He is encouraged to think of improving his condition, of raising his children in the social scale; so the more enterprising and intelligent of the class betake themselves to emigration, setting examples of successful adventure to their friends who are left behind.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE OLD AND THE NEW SPORTSMEN.

SHOOTING has been revolutionised in the last

fifty years. In the admirable volumes of the "Badminton Library," Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey fixes 1840 as about the date when heavy bags began to be made. The railways have brought the most remote districts within comparatively easy reach of the capital; luxurious shooting-lodges have been rising everywhere, in the lonely glens and on the melancholy sea-shores; and Highland landowners obtain fabulous rents for solitudes that used to let for a trifle to the tacksmen who bred roving herds of hill-cattle. The changes in England have been at least as great, although they show themselves under different aspects. The grouse are swarming now on the northern moors, where formerly the scattered coveys were only to be circumvented by exceedingly laborious work. The old style of shooting has gone out on the southern manors with the antiquated

systems of agriculture. The setters and pointers, the spaniels and cockers, have almost disappeared; the survivors of our sporting dogs are the black-coated retrievers that follow the lines of guns at the heels of the keepers. Pheasants, and sometimes partridges, are hand-fed by hundreds or by thousands in the great shooting-districts. The solemn battue, for which the covers are kept sacred, has replaced the rough-and-ready fashion of free-and-easy sport. Developments in guns have had at least as much to do with the changes as either the railways or scientific farming. Flint-locks were replaced by percussioncaps, and the muzzle-loader has been superseded in turn by the handy breech-loader. Now all the odds are in favour of the shooter, where the game has not been taught to take care of itself by an absolute destitution of convenient cover.

The new fashions of shooting have found able advocates, who demonstrate beyond a doubt that contemporary shots have degenerated neither in keenness nor science, while the quickness and precision with which the best of them drop their game seem more like sleight-of-hand than mere steady practice. The veteran of half a century ago would be nowhere now at the hottest corner of one of the home coverts, in a scattering "bouquet" of rocketing pheasants; or behind one of the "batteries" on a bare Yorkshire moor with the

grouse whistling past him down the wind like so many skimming flights of sea-swallows. Yet our grandfathers were masters of the craft according to their lights, and deadly although necessarily deliberate shots, notwithstanding their primitive weapons and cumbrous accoutrements. Possibly distance may lend enchantment to fond reminiscences; but we doubt whether, on the whole, the sportsman of the old school had not the best of it. Assuredly his arrangements were more economical than ours; and he had such chances of rough but romantic shooting as seldom fall to the lot of his grandchildren. He loved hard walking, for its own sake; a little excitement went a long way with him, and he was steeled against disappointments. What with the slow shooting and the stiff loading, he was naturally satisfied with small bags. One's memory may not go back to the old flint single barrel; but "Tom Oakleigh," who brought out his Shooting Code' in 1838, tells us that even then there were sturdy conservatives who still clung affectionately to the venerable weapon. That was simply old-fashioned prejudice, for there could be no question as to the superiority of the percussion gun. Yet even the percussion muzzleloader was a sore trial to the temper, and admirable discipline for an impetuous nature when the sport was good or the weather unfavourable.

We remember how impatient ejaculations would rise to the lips when birds were rising all around during the irritating process of loading. It was generally a case of more haste worse speed. You snatched at the powder-flask, which caught in the pocket-lining or slipped through the fingers. As you hurriedly poured in the charge from the spring shot-belt, half the pellets would go scattering down outside the barrel; the driving home the wadding with the slender and flexible ramrod was a work of time, toil, and trouble, with a reasonable probability of the snapping of the rod putting you hors de combat for the rest of the day. But the acme of provocation was in fumbling for the caps and fitting them to the nipples against time, and perhaps with halffrozen fingers. The rushing sound of wings in the air, the sight of ground-game scuttling through the underwood, mocked your impatience and irritated you to the verge of insanity, which, of course, put you off your shooting. In rain or sleet things were far worse. The powder-flask would get damp, and the powder would be caked in the mouth; the caps were saturated, in spite of "waterproof" pocket-linings, so that a miss-fire was as likely as not, even if you should be shooting at the first "cock" of the season. Then, as you fumbled over the pricker and the powder-flask, there seemed nothing for

M