dee; and without the slightest fear them in the garb of the forester, than that any of the numerous points of in the more fantastic fashion of the that interesting but incomprehensible minstrel. Be theirs the lot of Ryno, public document, which Mr. Joseph the hunter, not the darkened destiny of Hume proposes to condense, shall be the bard. unduly obtruded on our notice, we shall at once exchange our London dwelling for the more pleasant bothy of the hills. As for a companion, we shall seek none better-for we could not find one-than this last publication of the Stuarts. And here, once for all, let us draw a line of distinction betwixt the poetry and the prose of these very remarkable brothers. We have not the remotest intention of sitting in judgment on the "Lays," or of testing the poetical merits of John Sobieski and Charles Edward, either by the canons of Longinus, or by that superior code of literary laws which Maga has promulgated to the world. The poems which occupy exclusively the first of these volumes are, with one exception, fugitive in their nature, and appear to have been penned rather from occasional impulse, than from any deliberate intention of publication. Accordingly, we find that most of them relate to topics personal to the authors themselves, and with these we do not meddle. In others, there are flashes of the deep national spirit which still survives-though our rulers do not seem to mark it-in Scotland-indignation at the neglect with which too many of our national institutions have been treated, and mournful lamentings over the misfortunes of a former age. But the impulse which leads to the composition of poetry does not always imply its accomplishment. Poetry, as an art in which excellence can only be obtained by a combination of the simple and the sublime, requires a study far more intense and serious than the mere critic is apt to allow. In a former Number we devoted an article to an exposition of those principles, which are absolutely invariable in their application, and which must be thoroughly understood, if they are not intuitive to the poet; and, being in no mood for repetition, we shall simply say that we adhere to our recorded doctrines. The Stuarts, it must be confessed, are more successful with the rifle than the lyre. We would far rather meet Do, therefore, what you please with the first volume-pack it up in your portmanteau, or place it on the shelf, beside Chambers' History and the collections of good old Bishop Forbes ; but if you profess to be a deer-stalker though we fear your profession to be false-or if you are but an aspiring neophyte, and hankering after that proud position or if you merely bound your aspirations towards the compassing of the death of a roebuck -or if simply you have a keen and a kindly eye for nature, and are a lover of the sylvan solitudes-in one or other, or all of these characters, we pray you to deal more leisurely with the other tome, which is the Hunter's Vade-Mecum, the best guide ever yet published to the haunts of the antlered monarch. We are fond of Mr. Scrope, and we have an excessive partiality for St. John. Two finer fellows never shouldered a rifle; and our conscience does not accuse us of having used too superlative an epithet in their praise. This was the more creditable on our part, because we knew them both to be Southrons; and while freely admitting the sportsman-like qualities of the one, and the strong picturesque style and spirit of the other, we felt a slight, passing, but pardonable pang of jealousy, that they should have stepped in, and pre-occupied the native field. Where, thought we, are our Scottish deer-stalkers? Can the lads not handle a pen as well as touch a trigger? Will none of them, who have been trained to the hills since they were striplings, stand forth for the honour of Albyn, and try a match with these fustian-coated circumventers of the stag? By the shade of Domhnull Mac-Fhionnlaidh nan Dan, we blush for the literary reputation of our country, and almost wish that we were young enough, ourselves, to take the hill against the invading Sassenach! At length-and we are delighted to see it-the_re proach has been swept away. Two stalwart champions of the forest have risen, in the persons of the Stuarts; they have encountered the Englishmen with their own weapons, and, in our opinion, beaten them hollow. Mr. Scrope had the merit of producing the earliest work in which deerstalking was treated as a distinct and peculiar branch of the art venatory. We speak of it now from recollection, for our copy, somewhat frayed and worn by the fingers of ambitious sportsmen, is in the snug corner of a library, some hundred miles to the northward. But we remember well the Waltonian character of the book the professional style in which the elder practitioner enforced his precepts upon the dawning intellect of his companion; and the adventures, neither few nor feeble, which were depicted in the heart of the Atholl forest. Taken as the production of an English sportsman, Mr. Scrope's book is highly creditable: considered as the manual of a deer-stalker, it is, at the best, indifferent. Nor, indeed, could it well be otherwise. Not until middle age, if we are informed rightly, did Mr. Scrope first send a ball into the ample shoulder of a hart: his young blood never beat tumultuously in his veins, at the sight of the mighty creature rolling over upon the heather, and its antlers buried in the moss. His boyish enthusiasm, we fear, was expended upon game of less mark and likelihood-partridges, perchance, as they whirred from the turnips, or possibly he was "entered" with the hare. Wordsworth's maxim, that the boy is the father of the man, is peculiarly applicable in sporting matters. Upon the character of the country in which the latent spirit of the hunter is earliest developed, depends, in a great degree, his future success, and certainly his accomplishment as an Orion. The young squire, who has been brought up in the faith of Sykes, who never stirs abroad without a keeper, and who is accustomed to see his delicate pointers execute their manœuvres, with almost mathematical precision, on the flat stubbles of Norfolk, labours under a huge disadvantage in the higher branches of his science, compared with the Highland boy who has received his education on the hill. What though the single barrel of the latter be a clumsy implement, indeed, in competition with the Purdie which decorates the shoulder of the former-though the hound that sometimes attends him, though oftener he is alone, never slept a single night in a kennel, and is the ruggedest specimen of his kind-still he is in the enjoyment of advantages incomparably superior, for the development of all his faculties, and the sharpening of every sense. The triumph of the sportsman does not lie so much in the killing as in the finding of his game. Were it otherwise, the pigeon-slayer of Battersea, or the Red-house, would have just claims to the honours of Sir Tristram, and the annihilator of poultry to rank with the Nimrods of the world. Our young friend, the Squire, shoots well-that is to say, he can kill with reasonable precision; but, after all, what is he, save an instrument? Take Ponto away from him, tie up Juno, send a bullet through the brain of Basta, and a pretty beggarly account you will have of it in the evening, when we come to the emptying of the bags. Or lead him down to the sea-shore, and show him a whaup, which in the English tongue is denominated a curlew; request him to use all his possible skill to compass possession of the bird; but do not set your heart on having it, else, as sure as fate, you are doomed to disappointment. Whaup is quite alive to his own interest, and by no means unsuspicious of the Saxon, who advances straight towards him, with a hypocri tical air of unconcern. Had the Highland lad been there, what a difference! He would have dropped, like a stone, behind that rock, wriggled like a serpent over the sand, kept the bird between himself and the sea, taken advantage of every inequality in the ground, discerned from the attitude of his quarry whether its suspicions were aroused or not, and in ten minutes, a puff of white smoke, and a report, would have announced its extermination. As it is, the curlew remains apparently unconcerned, until the Lord of the Manor has reduced the intermediate distance to a hundred and twenty yards, and then, with a shrill whistle, takes flight along the margin of the tide. Or set him to stalk a blackcock, perched high, of an Autumn morning, on a dyke. How clumsily he sets about it! how miser able is his stoop! how wretchedly he calculates his distance! That wideawake hat, which, for the sake of symmetry, he has been pleased to surmount with a feather, is as conspicuous to the country for miles round, and of course to the blackcock, as was the white plume of Murat in the field of battle, and as potent to effect a clearance, of which we presently have ocular demonstration. We contend, therefore, that it is extremely difficult for the man, be he ever so addicted to field-sports, who has been educated in a cultivated country, to disembarrass himself of the artificial habits which he is tolerably sure to acquire. His trolling may be excellent indeed, English gentlemen are, generally speaking, first-rate shots-but he will be deficient in the science of the naturalist, and in that singular acuteness of perception which can hardly be gained save by an early intimacy with nature, on the mountain, the moor, or in the glen. No subsequent education or experience can make up for the nor mal deficiency, least of all in the pursuit of an animal so wary, so instinctive, and so peculiar in its habits as the deer. Of course we do not mean to deny that there is much which may be learned. What a pointer is to partridges, some wary and experienced forester may often be made to the deer; and if you put yourself under his tuition, and scrupulously obey his orders, you may very possibly succeed in attaining the object of your desires. Nor indeed can you do better, up to a certain point, notwithstanding the strictures of the Stuarts, who are, we think, unnecessarily wroth at the system which would call in the aid of any supplementary assistance. We hope no gentleman who has rented a forest for the ensuing season will be deterred from following the feet of a Highland Gamaliel on account of any ridicule which may be attached to the fact of his having been "taken up" to a deer. If he should rashly attempt stalking at his own hand, without any preliminary instruction, we should be sorry to found our hopes of dinner on the chance of his acquisition of a haunch. "When advancing upon deer ́ (say our authors)-except in strange ground -the forester, or any other attendant should be left behind a stone, or in some covert, before the stalker commences his approach; not from any recognition of the false approach made because there is no occasion for an assisagainst the guides by Mr. Scrope, but tant, and the action of one has more celerity, independence, and security from discovery, than when a greater number are in motion. The charge made by the author of The Art of Deer-stalking,' that the forester is often in the way, and sometimes obstructs the shot, is not true, unless in instances of inexperienced and awkward individuals, who are not to be whom the guest of the Atholl Forest profound among that class of foresters of poses his remarks. With a MacKenzie, or a MacDonald, a Catanach, and a MacHardie, the asserted inconvenience must proceed from the ignorance, or maladroitness of the gray worm which crawls at his back, and who often does not know what he is doing, or where he is going, with his ideas égaré on his sensitive of what he ought to do and nervous for knees and varnished Purdie, unconscious what he ought not, flurried with eagerness and disgusted with his posture, and who, never seeing a deer except once in the year, is led up to him like a 'blind burraid,' by one whose language he scarcely understands. In general, therefore, the embarrassments of the 'creep' are those of the superior, who is frequently so ignorant, unpractised, and rester, that to be taken up to the deer dependent upon the guidance of the fohas become the modern forest phrase for the approach of the sportsman. This contemptible term, and its contemptible practice, has only been introduced within the last quarter century, since the prevalence of stalking gentlemen utterly unacquainted with the ground and pursuit of deer. Of old, the Sealgair uasal nam bèann' was initiated to the hill when yet but a 'biorach' of a stalker; and when he became a matured hill-man, he should no more have suffered himself to be-' taken up to his deer' by an attendant, than a Melton fox-hunter to be trained after the hounds by a whipper-in with a leading rein.-What should have been the sentiments of the old chiefs and Uaislean of the last century-the Dukes of Atholl dar-lain dubh Bhail-a-Chroäin-to hear and Gordon-Glengarrie-John Aberara deer-hunter speak of being taken up to his deer-Certainly that he was a noble amadan' or 'gille-crùbach,' who had not the faculties or the limbs to act for himself-But this is only one of the many instances for which the hills of Gael may mourn with the mountains of Gilboa.--' Quomodo ceciderunt robusti!" Far are we from insinuating that Mr. Scrope is at all liable to the remarks contained in the foregoing extract. On the contrary, we hold him to be a man of vigorous mind and acute eye, and anything but a contemptible foe to the stags, after the measure of his own experience. If he is deficient at all, it is in the poetry and higher mysteries of the art, which hardly would be expected from a stranger, whose initiation was necessarily late. Waverley, though a respectable shot, and a man of literary taste, would, we apprehend, have described the driving and disposition of the tainchel less effectively, and certainly far less truly, than Fergus M'Ivor; so great a difference is there betwixt the craft of the master and his pupil. Let Mr. Scrope, therefore, rest content with the laurels he has won, and the trophies he has taken from the forest. Not unforgotten is his name in Atholl, nor unloved. Let him be a guide to the Southron, but he must not dream of rivalling the Stuarts in woodcraft, or Stoddart in the science of piscation. Of Mr. St. John's "Wild Sports of the Highlands," we have already spoken in terms of unqualified praise. A more delightful volume was never adapted for the pocket of the sportsman: a more truthful or observant work has seldom issued from the pen of the naturalist. His sketches and Not so Gentlemen who complain of the inferior accommodation afforded by some of the more distant hostelries of Scotland-who are shocked at the absence of warming-pans, and tremulously nervous about your sanatory condition, when subjected to the enormity of damp sheets-how would you like to spend a few nights on the misty hillside, or even in the hut of the hunters? We shall take you if you please to the latter spot, merely premising that, in order to reach it, we must cross the Findhorn, now roaring down in spate. A terrible stream is that Findhorn, as Mr. St. John well knows; but we question whether he ever ventured to ford it on the rise, as was done by one of the Stuarts. For the information of distant friends, we beg to put our imprimatur to the following description of this furious Highland flood, which rolled between the residence of hunters and their favourite the ground. "That stream, however, which was so calm, and bright, and sunny, when the otters floated down its current in a still summer's morning, was a fierce and terrible enemy in its anger; and, for a great part of the year, the dread of its uncertainty and danger was a formidable cause for the preservation of that profound solitude of the forest which so long made it the sanctuary of deer, roe, and every kind of wild game. The rapidity with which the river comes down, the impassable height to which it rises in an incredibly short time, its incertitude and fury, would render it an object of care to bold forders and boatmen; but with the peasants of the 'laich, unaccus tomed, like the Highlanders, to wrestle with a mountain torrent, and, excepting in rare instances, unable to swim or manage a coble, it inspires a dread, almost amounting to awe, and none except ourselves ventured to keep a boat above the fishing station of Slui. Pent within a channel of rocks from fifty to a hundred and eighty feet in height the rise of the water is rapidly exaggerated by the incapability of diffusion; and the length of its course sometimes concealing beyond the horizon the storms by which it is swelled at its source, its floods then descend with unexpected violence. Frequently when, excepting a low wreath upon Beann-Drineachain, the sun is shining in a cloudless sky, and the water scarce ripples over the glittering ford, a deep hollow sound-a dull approaching roar may be heard in the gorges of the river; and almost before the wading fisherman can gain the shore, a bank of water, loaded with trees, and rocks, and wreck, will come down hree-four-five feet abreast-sweeping all before it in a thunder of foam and ruin. In ordinary cases, after two days of rain, the stream will rise twenty or thirty feet -it has risen nearly ten fathoms in its rocky gulf; and once upon this occasion it mounted fifteen feet in a quarter of an hour. When the dawn broke, it appeared sweeping through the trees, which the evening before hung fifty feet above its brink-a black roaring tempest loaded with ruins and debris, from which were seen to rise at times the white skeletons of trees peeled of their bark, beams and couples of housesa cart-a door-a cradle, hurrying and tilting through the foam and spray, like the scattered floatsome' of a wreck. "It may be judged how far it was convenient in winter to hunt a forest separated by such a boundary, of which the nearest certain passage was by a bridge two miles to the west, with frequently the view of hunting three miles to the east. Often we have gone out in a clear sapphire morning, when there was scarce a ripple on the pools, and the water on the ford was not over our 'glunachan,' and when we returned at evening, and approached through the dark veil of pines which descended the river, have heard a roar as if the world was rolling together down the black trough before us, and as we came out on the bank, found a furious tempest of water, tumbling, and plunging, and leaping, over stock and rock twenty feet upon the clatach, where we had left it whimpering among the pebbles in the morning; while, in the far,deep, birch-embowered channel, where the stream was then so still and placid that you could only guess its course by the bright glistening eye which here and there blinked between the trees and stones, now it came yelling, and skirling, and clamouring down the rocks and falls, as if all the air was full of gibbering, babbling, laughing demons, who were muttering, and yammering, and prophesying, and hooting, at what you were going to do if you attempted to cross." We pray you at your leisure to read on, and you will presently see what peril our authors underwent at the fearful fords of the Findhorn, Once or twice in our life we have been in similar jeopardy, and we can testify with unction to the singular sensations which beset a man in the midst of a roaring river, when the rapids are shooting away below, and the boulder-stones rolling beneath his feet. We pass over some perilous instances of adventure, which at length became so frequent as to lead to the construction of the hut. "Such continually and unexpectedly were the ferries of the Findhorn, and many such escapes we had, in daylight and in darkness.-Twice I have been swamped, often nearly upset, and more than once carried off my legs in the fords; and I say it with humility, and always under the mercy of heaven-that I owed rescue either to actual swimming, or to the confidence inspired by that power when struggling with the strong and terrible enemy. "This continual exposure to battle and disappointment, however, became at length too vexatious an abridgment of sport and certainty; and as I wouldand often-have made my bed under a fir tree rather than go round by the bridge of Daltullich, I resolved upon another alternative-to build in the forest a 'bothan an t-sealgair,' or 'hunter's hut,' where we might lodge for the night when it was impossible to cross the water. "There is a high and beautiful craig at the crook of the river near the 'Little Eas,'-a precipice eighty feet in height, and then like a vast stone helmet erowned with a feathery plume of wood, which nodded over its brow. From its top you might drop a bullet into the pool below, but on the south side there is an acces sible woody bank, down which, by planting your heels firmly in the soil and among the roots of the trees, there is a descent to a deep but smooth and sandy ford. Upon the summit of the rock there is, or there was-my blessing upon it!— a thick and beautiful bird-cherry, which hung over the craig, and whose pendant branches, taking root on the edge of the steep, shot up again like the banana, and formed a natural arbour and close trellis along the margin of the precipice. Behind its little gallery, there is a mighty holly, under which the snow rarely lays in winter, or the rain drops in summer. Beneath the shelter of this tree, and within the bank at its foot, I dug a little cell, large enough to hold two beds, a bench, a hearth, a table, and a ‘kistie.' The sides were lined with deals well caulked with moss, and the roof was constructed in the same manner, but covered with a tarpauling, which, lying in the slope of the surrounding bank, carried off any water which might descend from thaw or rain,and, when the autumn trees shook off their leaves, could not be distinguished from the adjoining bank. Its door was on the brink of the craig, veiled by the thick bird-cherries on the edge of the |