oting was then an enjoyable sport, and Boz was probably thinking of
the rooks at Cobham, where he had no doubt hovered round the party when a
lad. As we know, Mr. Tupman, who was a mere looker-on, was "peppered" by
his friend Winkle, a difficult thing to understand, as Winkle must have
been firing high into the trees, and if he hit his friend at all, would
have done so with much more severity. The persons who were in serious
danger from Mr. Winkle's gun were the boys in the trees, and we may
wonder that one, at least, was not shot dead. But the whole is so
pleasantly described as to give one a perfect _envie_ to go out and shoot
rooks. There are some delightful touches, such as Mr. Pickwick's alarm
about the climbing boys, "for he was not quite certain that the distress
in the agricultural interest, might not have compelled the small boys
attached to the soil to earn a precarious and hazardous existence by
making marks of themselves for inexperienced sportsmen." And again, "the
boy shouted and shook a branch with a nest on it. _Half-a-dozen young
rooks in violent conversation flew out to ask what the matter was_." Does
not this bring the whole scene before us.

The other shooting scene is near Bury St. Edmunds--on Sir Geoffrey
Manning's grounds--on September 1st, 1830, or 1827, whichever Boz
pleases, when "many a young partridge who strutted complacently among the
stubble with all his finical coxcombry of youth, and many an older one
who watched his levity out of his little, round eye with the contemptuous
air of a bird of wisdom and experience, alike unconscious of their
approaching doom, basked in the fresh morning air with lively and
blithesome feelings, and, a few hours later, were laid low upon the
earth." Here we have the beginning of that delightful fashion of
Dickens's, which he later carried to such perfection, of associating
human feelings and associations with the animal creation, and also
inanimate objects.

Everything connected with "the shooting" is admirably touched: The old,
experienced "shot," Wardle; the keepers and their boys; the dogs; the
sham amateurs; the carrying of the guns "reversed arms, like privates at
a funeral." Mr. Winkle "flashed and blazed and smoked away without
producing any material results; at one time expending his charge in mid-
air, and at others sending it skimming along so near the surface of the
ground as to place the lives of the two dogs on a rather uncertain and
p