splendida vitia_,
by which process the poem, in our humble opinion, was shorn of its
brightest beams, and suffered disastrous twilight and eclipse--perplexing
critics.

Now, seeing that such pastimes are in number almost infinite, and
infinite the varieties of human character, pray what is there at all
surprising in your being madly fond of shooting--and your brother Tom
just as foolish about fishing--and cousin Jack perfectly insane on
fox-hunting--while the old gentleman your father, in spite of wind and
weather, perennial gout, and annual apoplexy, goes a-coursing of the
white-hipped hare on the bleak Yorkshire wolds--and uncle Ben, as if
just escaped from Bedlam or St Luke's with Dr Haslam at his heels, or
with a few hundred yards' start of Dr Warburton, is seen galloping, in a
Welsh wig and strange apparel, in the rear of a pack of Lilliputian
beagles, all barking as if they were as mad as their master, supposed to
be in chase of an invisible animal that keeps eternally doubling in
field and forest--"still hoped for, never seen," and well christened by
the name of Escape?

Phrenology sets the question for ever at rest. All people have
thirty-three faculties. Now there are but twenty-four letters in the
alphabet; yet how many languages--some six thousand we believe, each of
which is susceptible of many dialects! No wonder, then, that you might
as well try to count all the sands on the sea-shore as all the species
of sportsmen.

There is, therefore, nothing to prevent any man with a large and sound
development from excelling, at once, in rat-catching and
deer-stalking--from being, in short, a universal genius in sports and
pastimes. Heaven has made us such a man.

Yet there seems to be a natural course or progress in pastimes. We do
not now speak of marbles--or knuckling down at taw--or trundling a
hoop--or pall-lall--or pitch and toss--or any other of the games of the
school playground. We restrict ourselves to what, somewhat inaccurately
perhaps, are called field-sports. Thus Angling seems the earliest of
them all in the order of nature. There the new-breeched urchin stands on
the low bridge of the little bit burnie! and with crooked pin, baited
with one unwrithing ring of a dead worm, and attached to a
yarn-thread--for he has not yet got into hair, and is years off gut--his
rod of the mere willow or hazel wand, there will he stand during all his
play-hours, as forgetful of his primer as if the weary art of pr