d Sports mere shadow. We have too little of "the goodly rivers,"
"all sorts of fish," "the sweet islands and goodly lakes, like little
inland seas," "of the most beautiful and sweet countrey," as Spenser
phrases it in the author's title-page; and there is not so much as the
author promises in his preface, of shooting the wild moors and fishing
the waters, of days spent by "fell and flood," and light and joyous
nights in mountain bivouacs and moorland huts. There is too much
hearsay, and storytelling not to the purpose, and trifling gossip of
"exquisite potatoes" and "rascally sherry"--details which would disgrace
a half-crown guide book, and ought certainly not to be set forth with
spaced large type in hotpressed octavos at a costly rate. Nevertheless,
the work may suit club-room tables and circulating libraries, though it
will not be allowed place for vivid display of Wild Sports. We quote two
extracts--one, a narrative which the author knows to be substantially
true; the other, relating to the attack of eagles, (though we omit the
oft-told tale of the peasant attempting to rob an eagle's nest, and his
hair turning white with fright):--

_The Blind Seal._

About forty years ago a young seal was taken in Clew Bay, and
domesticated in the kitchen of a gentleman whose house was situated on
the sea-shore. It grew apace, became familiar with the servants, and
attached to the house and family; its habits were innocent and gentle,
it played with the children, came at its master's call, and, as the old
man described him to me, was "fond as a dog, and playful as a kitten."

Daily the seal went out to fish, and after providing for his own wants,
frequently brought in a salmon or turbot to his master. His delight in
summer was to bask in the sun, and in winter to lie before the fire, or,
if permitted, creep into the large oven, which at that time formed the
regular appendage of an Irish kitchen.

For four years the seal had been thus domesticated, when, unfortunately,
a disease, called in this country _the crippawn_--a kind of
paralytic affection of the limbs which generally ends fatally--attacked
some black cattle belonging to the master of the house; some died others
became infected, and the customary cure produced by changing them to
drier pasture failed. A wise woman was consulted, and the hag assured
the credulous owner, that the mortality among his cows was occasioned
by his retaining an unclean beast about his habitat