r way back to the Tent, is close at our side, to be
ready should Shelty stumble; O'Bronte as usual bounds in the van; and
Ponto, Piro, and Basta, impatient for the next heather hill, keep close
at our heels through the wood.

We do not admire that shooting-ground which resembles a poultry-yard.
Grouse and barn-door fowls are constructed on opposite principles, the
former being wild, and the latter tame creatures, when in their
respective perfection. Of all dull pastimes, the dullest seems to us
sporting in a preserve; and we believe that we share that feeling with
the Grand Signior. The sign of a lonely wayside inn in the Highlands,
ought not to be the Hen and Chickens. Some shooters, we know, sick of
common sport, love slaughter. From sunrise to sunset of the First Day of
the Moors, they must bag their hundred brace. That can only be done
where pouts prevail, and cheepers keep chiding; and where you have
half-a-dozen attendants to hand you double-barrels _sans_ intermission,
for a round dozen of hours spent in a perpetual fire. Commend us to a
plentiful sprinkling of game; to ground which seems occasionally barren,
and which it needs a fine instructed eye to traverse scientifically, and
thereof to detect the latent riches. Fear and Hope are the Deities whom
Christopher in his Sporting Jacket worships; and were they
unpropitious, the Moors would lose all their witchcraft. We are a dead
shot, but not always, for the forefinger of our right hand is the most
fitful forefinger in all this capricious world. Like all performers in
the Fine Arts, our execution is very uncertain; and though "_toujours
pret_" is the impress on one side of our shield, "_hit and miss_" is
that on the other, and often the more characteristic. A gentleman ought
not to shoot like a gamekeeper, any more than at billiards to play like
a marker, nor with four-in-hand ought he to tool his prads like the
Portsmouth Dragsman. We choose to shoot like a philosopher as we are,
and to preserve the golden mean in murder. We hold, with Aristotle, that
all virtue consists in the middle between the two extremes; and thus we
shoot in a style equidistant from that of the gamekeeper on the one
hand, and that of the bagman on the other, neither killing nor missing
every bird; but, true to the spirit of the Aristotelian doctrine,
leaning with a decided inclination towards the first rather than the
second predicament. If we shoot too well one day, we are pretty sure to