ve no doubt _you'd_ rather have

'A southerly wind and a cloudy sky,'

as the song says, than the brightest morning that ever welcomed a lark.
Are you fond of hunting?"

"I like every kind of sport where horse, or gun, or hound can enter; but
I 've seen most of such pastimes in distant countries, where the game is
different from here, and the character of the people just as unlike."

"'I have hunted the wild boar myself," said old Corrigan, proudly, "in
the royal forests at Meudon and Fontainebleau."

"I speak of the antelope and the jaguar, the dark leopard of Guiana, or
the brown bison of the Andes."

"That is indeed a manly pastime!" said Mary, enthusiastically.

"It is so," said Cashel, warmed by the encouragement of her remark,
"more even for the endurance and persevering energy it demands than for
its peril. The long days of toil in search of game, the nights of waking
watchfulness, and then the strange characters and adventures among which
you are thrown, all make up a kind of life so unlike the daily world."

"There is, as you say, something highly exciting in all that," said
Corrigan; "but, to my thinking, hunting is a royal pastime, and loses
half of its prestige when deprived of the pomp and circumstance of
its courtly following. When I think of the old forest echoing to the
tantarara of the _cor de chasse_, the scarlet-clad _piqueurs_ with
lance and cutlass, the train of courtiers mounted on their high-mettled
steeds, displaying all the address of the _salon_, and all the skill of
the chase, to him who was the centre of the group,--the king himself--"

"Are you not forgetting the fairest part of the pageants papa?" broke in
Mary.

"No, my dear, that group usually waited to join us as we returned. Then,
when the '_Retour de la Chasse_' rang out from every horn, and the whole
wood re-echoed with the triumphant sounds, then might be seen the
queen and her ladies advancing to meet us. I think I see her yet, the
fair-haired queen, the noblest and most beautiful in all that lovely
circle, mounted on her spotted Arabian, who bore himself proudly beneath
his precious burden. Ah! too truly did Burke say, 'the Age of Chivalry
was past,' or never had such sorrows gone unavenged. Young gentleman,
I know not whether you have already conceived strong opinions upon
politics, and whether you incline to one or other of the great parties
that divide the kingdom, but one thing I would beseech you,--be a
Monarch