ll render these efforts unavailing, to scan the wide
creation--or rather but a circlet of that creation--from an
insignificant hillock, scarcely an atom in the heap of created matter,
that is itself but as a grain of dust in the vast space through which
it rolls. But to our tale, or rather, it may be, to our task--for the
author is now sitting in his study, with the twilight of as dull,
hazy, and oppressive an atmosphere about him as beset our adventurous
sportsmen at the close of their campaign; enervating and almost
paralysing thought; the veriest foe of "soaring fantasy," which the
mere accident of weather will prevent from rising into the region
where she can reign without control, her prerogative unquestioned and
unlimited.

The party to whom we have just referred consisted of three
individuals, with their servants, biped and quadruped, from whom their
masters derived the requisite assistance during their useful and
arduous exploits--the results being conspicuous in the death of some
dozen or two of silly grouse or red game, with which these hills are
tolerably well supplied during the season. But alas! we are not
sportsmen ourselves, and bitterly do we lament that we are unable to
describe the desperate conflict, and the mighty issues of that
memorable day; the hopes, fears, and _fire-escapes_ of the whole
party: the consumption of powder, and the waste of flint, or the
comparative merits of Moll and Rover, we shall not attempt to set
forth in our "_veritable prose_," lest we draw down the wrath of some
disappointed fowler upon us for meddling with matters about which we
are so lamentably ignorant, and we are afraid to say, in some measure,
wilfully deficient. To the spoils, when obtained, it may be that we
are less indifferent; and we hail, with favourable reminiscences and
anticipations, the return of another 12th of August--an era which we
would earnestly and affectionately beseech our friends to remember
likewise, for purposes too interesting in the history of our domestic
arrangements to allow them willingly to forget.

But the August in which our narrative opens was many years ago--though
not precisely in the olden time--when the belief in old-world fancies
and delights was not in danger of being blazed out by "diffusions of
useful knowledge," which "useful" knowledge consists in dissipating
some of our most pleasant dreams, our fondest and most cherished
remembrances. We are afraid a writer of "Traditions