continental languages a few simple facts;" for but also that the nations are not really agreed indeed, the advantages of virtue, social and eco- upon the bases or conclusions for an international nomical, might be made apparent in a single one jurisdiction or code. You cannot, for example, of Mr. Cobden's paragraphs. Unfortunately, how- persuade the Mussulman to abandon conversion by ever, he has omitted almost every element of the the sabre; the Roman Catholic, to waive the calculation, excepting the most superficial and spiritual infallibility of the pope; you will not least powerful-the one of economical advantage. make France condemn political propagandism; Although so matter-of-fact a man, he has over-nor Russia abandon the divine right of kings. looked almost every fact in history; which would Without a guarantee for the duration of peace, show him, that nations as well as men are very or a court of appeal for the settlement of internapartially governed by mere questions of economical tional disputes, anything approaching what is interests; that they are governed much more indicated by the terms "mutual disarmament" powerfully by their desires, their passions, mutual must be impossible. Mutual diminutions of armies sympathies and antipathies, spirit of contest, and and fortifications have not been uncommon on the a thousand other influences, to which the consid- conclusion of war; but such partial abandoneration of profit is universally and peremptorily ment of warlike apparatus cannot be what is sacrificed. From the Spanish Abd-er-Rahman, meant by the new Cobdenite invention—the genwho walled up his contumacious mistress in unce- eral disarmament of nations, in order to save the mented ingots of gold, which she was to appro- money expended on the maintenance of standing priate on consenting to be kind, down to the last armies, at which he sneers as a modern innovascapegrace who has had his fling at Newmarket tion. Now he should be too good an economist or in Jermyn street, all classes of men have been not to know that standing armies are a product of willing to sacrifice profit for any favorite object. the modern economical improvement called "divisNations are composed of men, and have their ion of employments;" and that the distinct payhobbies as well; witness Algeria and Mexico. ment of a standing army is in reality a far less Every volume of history is a review of the inces-cost to the nation than the incalculable waste of sant sacrifices made by nations of their sober labor which occurred when the lords and their interests to their passions and prejudices. In the peasantry were summoned from their homesteads exclusive contemplation of his fixed idea, the and fields to perform military service. We canmatter-of-fact Cobden chooses so completely to not discontinue standing armies without reärming ignore the facts, that he becomes what Charles the good men and true throughout each country; Lamb called "a matter-of-lie man;" for does he a plan perhaps not altogether without its advannot go so far as to assert, that "to open the tages, but certainly not recommended by greater eyes" of Europe to his philosophy, you have thrift in the money way. "only to publish," &c.? The project is essentially unsound, since it can only rest for enforcement on the very measure which it prohibits. Perpetual peace has been the professed object of repeated treaties on the close of war; and there always has been peace-till the next war. Whether you stipulate it by "arbitration clauses" or by separate treaties, you can do no more than secure for it the same contingent duration, namely, a duration till the next war. What appeal in the last resort would there be in case the compact were broken? None, except to war. You would therefore have the absurdity of a peace ratified with extraordinary solemnity, purporting to be universal and perpetual, yet resting on the guarantee of war. As to the notion of simply disarming nations, it is the folly of monomania. Perhaps no nation is prepared for such a step; but certainly Europe, with its mixed population, its Babel of tongues, its contemporaneous existence of social conditions belonging to different ages, cannot in safety be disarmed. And when we remember that the proposal really is to disarm those nations which are the pioneers of civilization, it looks like a suggestion of the Arch-Enemy to betray the whole of what mankind has gained since the middle ages. Preach as we may, there are some nations to whom such a precept would be an unknown tongue, or, if understood, ridiculous. Russia, whose autocrat we this week see speaking as the interpreter of divine authority and receiving the prostrate submission of superstitious slaves, will hardly abandon the army of bean-eating barbarians which is to him so cheap and so convenient for keeping his nobles in order. The remoter provinces of eastern Europe-Hungary, for instanceare literally in a social condition not unlike that of Europe when it emerged from the dark ages, and as little likely to comprehend the virtue or the policy of forgetting the sword. To disarm western Europe, therefore, would be deliberately to place that region in the position of degenerate Rome, before the Goths and Huns of the nine As to the congress of nations to form an international code, Mr. Cobden very justly doubts its feasibility; though it would in fact form the only court of appeal for the peaceable enforcement of his peace treaties; so that we do not see why he can object. We have, indeed, as it has been observed, books and precedents, which somewhat supply the place of an international code. And there is no present hope of obtaining greater perfection under that head. The reason why international jurisdiction remains vague and imperfect is, not only that there exists no higher power capable of adjudicating and enforcing its judgment, teenth century. LOMBARDY. THE struggle for the independence of North Italy threatens to terminate in utter failure, the efforts at union by negotiation being as powerless as the bayonets of Charles Albert. To the proposals of France and England, Austria has returned an answer to the effect that she accepts the mediation, but refuses all the conditions. In common times such an answer would be taken as a somewhat scurvy and ill-mannered jest. No one, indeed, could make such an answer without laughing at those to whom it was addressed; and Marshal Radetzky no doubt indulges in covert cachinations. General Cavaignac, however, accepts the apparently grave excuse, and there, no doubt, will be an end of the matter. Cavaignac is a brave and honest soldier, but he is no adept in diplomacy or foreign policy. Nothing was more simple or more plain than the part he had to play. General Cavaignac, as the representative of turbulent and impetuous France, was to speak big, and act up to what he spoke. He was to assume the attitude of a military chief, able to let slip the impetuous rage of 500,000 soldiers. Too martial and too hasty to trust his own temper in the conduct of negotiations, General Cavaignac might have been supposed to have had recourse to the good offices of England, and to have allowed himself to be persuaded by Lord Palmerston to entrust to him the task of inducing Austria to obviate a war by giving fair terms to the Lom bards. Such was the intelligible position of England, France, and Austria at the first offer of mediation. England, it was evident, was not the menacing power. Her government was not impelled by public opinion or warlike sentiment to intervene. There was no fear of England's going to war to free Lombardy or any other country. The spectre to be exorcised was France; wild, frantic, republican France. In order to the success of the negotiation, which England undertook, it was requisite that France should play the part of a formidable and impetuous country, reckless of risk, ready for war. France being such, England might safely counsel Austria to yield, or the French should be forthwith let loose upon her. if he did so, the Austrians did not believe in the There remains the chance for Lombardy, that Austria can never relapse under the old leaden despotism of Metternich; and whilst any degree of liberty is enjoyed at Vienna, some portion of it must be communicated to Venice and Milan. Even the court promises to give the Lombardo-Venetian cabinet of Vienna. This is no great boon; it was a prince who shall govern independently of the already enjoyed by Hungary and by Poland, and it was found more galling and oppressive than the direst rule of the metropolitan government. This, therefore, however it might flatter the nationality, would not be likely to increase the freedom of Lombardy. it a salutary manner. The fear of France, however, might operate in Vienna will recover its military supremacy and It is scarcely to be hoped that unity. Even now, if France shrinks from war, is not so much Austrian armies that she dreads as the Russian hordes, which are already mustered, armed, and ready. Circumstances may occur from day to day which would separate Germany from that case Austria could never hold Italy, except Russia, if not place them in hostility. And in by the good-will of its inhabitants. With the view to a very possible contingency, even an Austrian prince may imitate the Austrian ruler of Tuscany, and establish a liberal and a national system of administration, which is all that the Lombards require. They are far from republican in North Italy. The noblesse is enlightened, wealthy, and numerous, wealth divided amongst many. The citizen class is also numerous and rich. abundant to the poor. The means of life are independence and municipal rights would render A certain degree of local the Lombards happy, and probably careless as to the nature of the supreme sovereignty, in the Unfortunately, General Cavaignac knew not how It is in the power of Austria, as well as of name of which government was administered. to play this game. Instead of playing the Alex- France, to free and satisfy the Italians, which ander, or employing some of the poetic and inflated will be best done by leaving them as much as poslanguage of Napoleon, he spoke out as mildly, and sible to themselves. For if German bayonets, as calmly, and as fairly, as the hero of an heredi-functionaries, and police still persist in lording it tary monarchy five centuries old. Instead of personally over the Lombards, they may reckon wearing pride, he put on humility; instead of a upon at least quinquennial explosions, and some soldier's voice, he spoke with a clerk's. In place day of reckoning which, unlike that of March, will of defying old Radetzky, General Cavaignac made be final.-Examiner, 30th Sept. a variety of humble apologies to the Austrian legation secretary, M. de Thom; and when the latter bullied and asked for his passports, Cavaignac printed an humble apology in the Moniteur. Of course, when the chief of the French government thus played the humble, it was impossible for the representative of England to play the brave. Or, METALS IN THE HUMAN BLOOD.-M. E. Millon has proved by analysis, that the blood of man constantly contains silex, manganese, lead, and copper. The copper and lead are not in a state of diffusion the globules, and everything leads us to believe that through the blood; they are fixed with the iron in they share with it organization and life. From the Spectator, 30th Sept. FRANK FORESTER'S FIELD SPORTS IN THE U. : like a high effort of mind, together with the exhibition of judgment, readiness, and gunner-like skill on the part of the sportsman. And these, it strikes us, may be nearly as well enjoyed at home as in America-unless the thickness of the woods, the freshness of the landscapes, the wildness and extent of the marshy wastes, be an object with the sportsman; for in all these America must carry off the palm. She seems to us to want game. Her hare is so small that it is popularly called and considered by persons above the vulgar a rabbit; the nice scrutiny of a naturalist being pheasant she has not; ruffed grouse (in American parlance, partridges) cannot be followed with success from the rocky and woody nature of their haunts; the Canadian grouse is still more difficult of access, rare even to the naturalist. Grouseshooting proper may still be met with on the western prairies; in other places it seems to be practically extinct, through the practices Mr. Forester denounces. MR. FORESTER is an Englishman, the son of a Dean of Manchester, who has resided for the last sixteen or seventeen years in America. Ardently addicted to field sports, he has pursued them in the new country with as much zest as in the old; though his tastes have induced him to prefer a class of sport analogous to our partridge, pheasant, and grouse shooting, rather than water-fowling. Want of opportunity or of liking has pre-requisite to discover the difference. Partridge and vented him from engaging in the more perilous but less scientific chase of the far West, or of the remote forests of Canada and the Hudson's Bay territory but he knows the theory of every kind of sport pursued on the continent of North America, from rail and plover shooting, up to the moose, the elk, and the grisly bear of the Rocky Mountains; and he has examined both written and oral accounts with a critical mind, so as to deduce the principles of the sport from the practical facts. Mr. Forester also appears to have used his pen, in conjunction with other sporting spirits of the western world, in periodical writings for the American public, with objects something more than literary. The description of a fine week's sport, or the dramatized account of an extraordinary feat, is all very well; but some of the writers have had higher aims. They would urge upon the state legislatures the necessity of more stringent game-laws, and upon the public mind the propriety of observing such as do exist; they denounce the gluttony of "snobs" and citizens, who encourage poachers and pot-hunters by purchasing their illgotten trophies in season and out of season; they would direct the public mind to the approaching extinction not only of vermin and beasts of prey, but of some of the noblest animals or handsomest birds with which the States once abounded; and they hold up to odium the rustic "savages" who take advantage of the accidents of the seasons to massacre entire masses of creatures for some wretchedly small gain, as well as the unsystematic, unsportsmanlike slaughter continually carried on by town loafers and village idlers, with bad guns and low-bred curs. In fact, "sporting" would seem to be in a transition state in America; the condition of nature past, and that of art not yet attained. It be ing understood that by sporting is not meant lying on your back or your belly in a punt, or some such contrivance, for an indefinite number of hours, in the worst kind of weather, in order to massacre large numbers of water-fowl, or the dangerous but exciting chase of the wild or savage animals of the wilderness. In Mr. Forester's ideas," sporting" embraces the enjoyment of air, exercise, and varying landscape; the exhibition of animal instinct, increased by breeding, cultivated by art, and displaying sagacity that looks Published in very handsome style, by Stringer & Townsend, New York. birds still linger among the sandy pine barrens, In the State of New Jersey, it is said that a few along the southern shore; but if so, they have become so rare that it is worse than useless to attempt hunting for them. On the brush plains of Long Island they were entirely extinct even before my arrival in America. Among the scrub oaks in the mountains of Pike and Northampton counties, in Eastern Pennsylvania, a few packs are supposed to be bred yearly, and a few sportsmen are annually seduced into the attempts to find them. But annually the attempt is becoming more and more useless, and anything approaching to sport is absolutely hopeless. Many years ago I spent a week among the forest land northward of Milford; and with no success whatever, not so much as seeing a single bird. In Martha's Vineyard they are so strictly preserved, that I have never taken the trouble of travelling thither on the chance of obtaining permission to shoot at them; although I am well aware that there are sportsmen from New York who resort thither yearly in pursuit of them. On the barrens of Kentucky, where they formerly abounded, as in the Eastern States, they have become extinct; and, in truth, unless the sportsman is prepared to travel so far as Chicago, St. Joseph's, or St. Louis, he has not much chance of obtaining anything to reward his pains in the way of grouse-shooting. As succedanea for our principes of the field, the moor, the wood, and the table, the Americans have snipe and woodcock shooting in far greater perfection than we have; and quails, so numerous and so different in habits from those of Europe that they may be considered a new style of sport. There is also rail shooting from boats, made purposely to push through flats just covered by the rising tide, where the so-called sportsman stands in the bow, incapable of missing unless he is the merest bungler or he tumbles into the mud, but where all the merit is due to the boatman. And there is plover shooting, which is practised in. England; though not exactly in the fashion. in which the sandpiper is pursued. 376 FIELD SPORTS IN THE UNITED STATES AND THE BRITISH PROVINCES. This sandpiper flies very swiftly, and when on | irregular fowlers may pursue the water birds; but the wing shows like a very large bird, owing to they cannot on the same scale as in the case of the great length of its sharp-pointed wings. At land birds, where every parish-boy with a musket first sight, you would suppose it to be as large as a pigeon; although its body is not, in truth, very may do mischief. To those who are partial to much larger than that of the common snipe, or in- this kind of sport America still offers great temptermediate between that and the woodcock; while tations; but it is chiefly on the sea-coast or tothe extent of its wings from tip to tip exceeds either wards the embouchures of rivers. The inland of these, by nearly one fourth. Like many other waters, even in America, appear to have been species of wild birds, this sandpiper is extremely acted upon by improvement; at least in New cunning, and appears to be able to calculate the York and the older free states, with which Mr. range of a fowling-piece with great nicety; and Forester seems most conversant. This is his acyou will constantly find them sitting perfectly at their ease, until a few paces more would bring you count of duck-shooting on the inland waters. within shot of them, and then rising, with their provoking whistle, just when you believe yourself sure of getting a crack at them. In the same manner they will circle round you, or fly past you, just out of gunshot, tempting you all the time with hopes that will still prove false, unless you have some such device as Eley's cartridges, by which to turn the shrewdness of this cunning little schemer to its own destruction. In Rhode Island, where alone the sport is now pursued systematically, the mode adopted is this: the shooter, accompanied by a skilful driver, on whom, by the way, the whole onus of the business rests, and to whom all the merit of success if attained is attributable, is mounted in what is termed in New England a chaise, that is to say, an oldfashioned gig with a top. In this convenience he kneels down, with his left leg out of the carriage, and his foot firmly planted on the step, holding his gun ready to shoot at an instant's notice. The driver, perceiving the birds as they are running and feeding on the open surface, selects one according to his judgment, and drives round it rapidly in concentric circles, until he gets within gunshot of it, and perceives by its motions that it will not permit a nearer approach. He then makes a short half turn from it, pulling the horse short up at the same instant; and at that very same instant, for the sandpiper rises invariably at the moment in which the chaise stops, the shooter steps out lightly to the ground, and kills his bird before it has got well upon the wing. In the timing of all this various work on the part of the driver and the gunner, there is a good deal of skill requisite, and of course a good deal of excitement. But the real sport and the real skill are both on the part of the driver; whose duty it is to deliver his marksman as nearly as possible to the game, yet never to run the thing so close as to allow the sandpiper to take the wing before he has pulled up. The difference in the judgment and skill of the drivers is immense; and there is one gentleman in New York, a well-known and old friend of the public, who is said to be so infinitely superior to all others, that the gun in his chaise, even if it be handled by the inferior shot, is sure to come off the winner. It is not unusual, I am told, to bag from twenty to twenty-five couples of these delicious birds in a day's sport in this manner; and I have heard of infinitely greater quantities being brought to bag. In the Eastern and Middle States, unless on the borders of the great lakes, this sport of late years can hardly be said to exist at all. The birds are becoming rare and wild; and although still shot in sufficient numbers by the local gunners, on the streams of New Jersey, to supply the demands of the markets, they are not found numerous enough to justify the pursuit of the sportsman. Formerly on the drowned lands of Orange county, on the meadows of Chatham and Pine Brook, on the Passaic and its tributaries, before the modern system of draining and embanking, hundreds, nay thousands of acres, were annually covered with shallow water at the breaking up of winter; and the inundated flats were literally blackened with all the varieties of duck which I have heretofore enumerated, affording rare sport to the gunner, and alluring gentlemen from the larger cities to follow them with the canoe; in a day's paddling of which among the inundated groves and over the floated meadows, it was no unusual event, nor regarded in anywise as extraordinary good fortune, to kill a hundred fowl and upward of the different varieties; all of which, however, are alike in one respect, that they are all delicious eating. I have myself been in the habit of considering the summer duck as the most delicate and succulent food of the inland, as distinguished from the ocean ducks: but this, I believe, owing greatly, if not entirely, to its being the best fed of its genus in the regions wherein I have been wont to eat it; for I understand that on the great lakes, and in the western country generally, the blue-winged teal is regarded as its superior in epicurean qualifications. All that kind of shooting is now at an end in this district of country; and although they still abound on the great lakes, along the Canada frontier, and eastward in the British Provinces, the vast extent of those inland seas which they there frequent renders it impossible, or at least so difficult as to become irksome to take them, except by lying at ambush on points over which they fly, and on the woody margins of the forest-streams and inlets, which they frequent for the purpose of feeding and roosting. In such localities, where streams, debouching into the great lakes, flow through submerged and swampy woodlands, the ducks of all kinds are wont to fly regularly land ward, in large plumps, or small scattered parties, for an hour or two preceding sun-down; and a good shot well concealed in such a place, with a good double-gun, loaded with No. 4 up to BB, as may be the nature of his ground and the species of his game, will freloaded with twenty or thirty couple of wild-fowl. quently return from a single evening's expedition In wild-fowl or water-fowl shooting America has the advantage over England, from the number of her lakes, the immense extent of her rivers and embouchures, with the varied character and climate of her sea-coast. A still greater advantage It may seem strange that Mr. Forester should arises from the comparative paucity of population: give accounts from which a conclusion is deduced ogous to our common shooting; bay or water-fowl shooting; and wild sports of the wilderness. Under each of these three heads Mr. Forester gives a list of the animals included in the division, with a full description of their forms and habits, quoted from one or more historians, occasionally interspersed with his own remarks, when he thinks addition, qualification, or correction needed. The directions, remarks, and anecdotes more distinctly applicable to the sportsman, follow in like manner, arranged under distinct heads, and, with some advice on dogs, guns, and the miscellanies of the sportsman, form the original part of the work; the natural history not being compilation so much as direct quotation. so much at variance with the usual idea of game | dubon, Giraud, Godman, and others. American in America; and perhaps something may be al- shooting is divided into three parts-upland, anallowed for the fact just mentioned, that he seems more conversant with the older settled free states than with those of the south and west, or with the British possessions towards the north. In the west, however, sport-that is, shooting systematically and over trained dogs-is not introduced; and in the south it is not every one that could stand the climate. Possibly, also, Mr. Forester's agitation in favor of game-laws may have tempted him to paint the scarcity of game as greater than it really is. Still, the facility of locomotion by steamboat and railway does to a great extent the work of increasing population; easily transporting the city poacher (though in law no more a poacher than Mr. Forester) to a distance, and enabling the pot-hunters of remote places to transmit their spoils to the gourmands of the city. This is his lamentation over snipe and woodcock shooting on the "Drowned Lands" of Orange county. The shooting on that ground is now ended. The Erie railway passes within ten miles of it, and it is now overrun with city poachers and pot-hunters; besides being shot incessantly by the farmers' boys and village idlers of the neighborhood, who have begun to compete with the New York vagabonds in supplying the market with game. I confess that I have often wondered that the owners of these tracts have not had the shrewdness 66 into each of their pockets. Mr. Forester's manner is frank and earnest, with a little of the peculiar "hail fellow well met" style which belongs to the modern school of sporting writers. It does not, however, seem to be imitation in him, but natural, part of the mind and manners of the man; and his matter is of the same racy and original kind—always clear and characteristic, with some of the freshness of the scenery in which his art and its subjects live, move, and have their being. He has poetical feeling too, and can paint a picture. Here is one from summer woodcock shooting. I have taken the opportunity of making these to discover that by enforcing the laws, and prohib- this place, because in summer woodcock shooting, observations on dog-breaking and dog-hunting in iting trespassers, they might annually let the shootabove any other phase of the sport, an implicit ing of these ranges for very considerable sums. The Drowned Lands" are in general held in obedience, great steadiness, and perfect stanchness large farms, and the best shooting is all owned, is required in the dog. In quail or snipe shooting, comparatively speaking, by a very few individuals. you can see your dog the greater part of the time; I have not the slightest hesitation in saying that if you can observe his every motion; and can usually, some half dozen or eight farmers, whose land If you are quick-sighted and ready-witted, foresee know, would resolutely put an end to all shooting him. In summer shooting, woe betide you if you when he is about to commit a fault in time to check on their premises, they could readily let the right entertain so wild a hope. You hunt darkling, of shooting to an association of gentlemen, at a price which would put a hundred dollars annually by snatches, often judging him to be on the point, catching sight of your four-footed companion only I could find the gentlemen who would give it, because you have ceased to hear the rustle of his and be but too glad of the opportunity; and who, sinuous movement through the bushes; or because looking forward to enjoyment of the same sport water-flags or fern so recently as you should have you have not seen his form gliding among the in future years, would neither wantonly annihilate the stock, nor do the mischief to the grass crops done, had he turned at his regular distance, and and fences which continually results from the in-quartered his ground without finding game. cursions of the loafers and vagabonds who It is not once in ten, nay in twenty times, that the great bulk of rural sportsmen. I really should you see him strike his trail, draw on it, become greatly rejoice at seeing something of this sort at-look for him where he ought to be, and find him surer, and stand stiff. You lose him for a moment, tempted. Its effect would be most beneficial on because he is there, pointing as you expected. A the preservation of game generally throughout the United States. step or two forward, with your thumb on the ham mer, and the nail of your forefinger touching the inside of your trigger-guard. Still he stands steady as a rock; and you know by the glare of his fixed eye, and the frown of his steadfast brow, and the slaver on his lip, that the skulking cock is within ten feet of his nose, perhaps within ten inches. You kick the skunk cabbages with your foot, or tap the bunch of cat-briars with your gun-muzzleand flip-flap up he jumps, glances, half-seen for a second, between the stems of the alder bushes, and dark-green heads, before your gun-butt has touched is lost to sight among the thick foliage of their your shoulder. But your eye has taken his line— the trigger is drawn, the charge splinters the stems and brings down a shower of green leaves, and compose It is Mr. Forester's opinion that little of the mechanical part of sporting can be taught, and that that little is better taught by example than by precept. Practice is the only method of acquiring certainty of aim and readiness in firing. The different results which are found in the success of equal shots are owing to a knowledge of the haunts and habits of different birds, and special observation of nature in the field. To facilitate the acquisition of this kind of knowledge is the main object of Mr. Forester's book; and he draws very freely upon the natural historians of America-Wilson, Au |