denizens of these forests and these
mountains: there is room here for them all to live at their ease; and
they abound. No one with a good barrel and a sure aim, ever entered
these forests in vain: his burden is commonly more than he can carry
home. It is in fact a glorious country for the sportsman; for the lower
ranges of the hills abound in hares, the cultivated grounds have plenty
of partridges and quails, and the forests are tenanted as has been seen.
He who can content himself with his gun or his rod--for the streams are
full of trout--may here pass a golden age, without a thought for the
morrow, without a desire unfulfilled.

Certainly, if I wished to retire from the world and lead a life of
philosophic indifference, not altogether out of the reach of society
when I wanted it, these hills and these forests of Auvergne, and the
Mont Dor, would be the spots I should select. The mind here would become
attuned to the grand harmonies of nature's own making; here, philosophy
might be cultivated in good earnest; here, books might be studied and
theories digested, without interruption and with inward profit. Here, a
man might cultivate both science and art, and he might become again the
free and happy being which, until he betook himself to congregating in
towns, he was destined to be. Yes! when I do withdraw from this world's
vanities and troubles, give me forests and mountains like those of Mont
Dor.

THE FIGHTING EIGHTY-EIGHTH.[3]

The pugnacity of Irishmen has grown into a proverb, until, in the belief
of many, a genuine Milesian is never at peace but when fighting. With
certain nations, certain habits are inseparably associated as peculiarly
characterising them. Thus, in vulgar apprehension, the Frenchman dances,
the German smokes, the Spaniard serenades; and on all hands it is agreed
that the Irishman fights. Naturally bellicose, his practice is
pugnacious: antagonism is his salient and distinctive quality. Born in a
squabble, he dies in a shindy: in his cradle he squeals a challenge; his
latest groan is a sound of defiance. Pike and pistol are manifest in his
well-developed bump of combativeness; his name is FIGHT, there can be no
mistake about it. From highest to lowest--in the peer and the
bog-trotter, the inherent propensity breaks forth, more or less modified
by station and education.

Be its expression parliamentary or popular, in Donnybrook or St
Stephen's, out it will. "Show me the man who'll tr