o abreast. We fear there
will be some difficulty in blending the huntsman and the warrior; nor
can we comprehend the idea of a sporting military gent running after a
fox with "his sword and belt," "taking close order" at the heels of
Reynard, or practising the goose-step by way of "a little drill"
previous to the starting of the game. The passage in the circular which
asks every trooper to "be so kind as to say" if he "can procure a dog,"
is suggestive of an awful assemblage of mongrels, and destructive to all
our ideas of "sport."

We can fancy the canine Babel that would be the consequence if the
brutes should happen to "give tongue." If everybody is "so kind as to
procure a dog," there would inevitably be a regiment of dogs as well as
a regiment of soldiers; there can be no objection to a vast assemblage
of dogs at any given point for a given period, but when the dogs have
had their day, we would ask in a spirit of much misgiving, what is to
become of these dogs when the drill is at an end? We can only say that
we should be sorry to eat a sausage within five miles of the place where
that troop had been assembled, until at least a month after they should
be disbanded, and their dogs should have disappeared.

* * * * *

PIUS PINGUIS.

That the POPE should have been ordered to play billiards to counteract
obesity, is a circumstance suggestive of certain natural remarks. A
person who fasts as often as the Roman Pontiff must fast, and yet gets
fat, is a wonder; and perhaps the plumpness of PIUS, attained
principally on red herrings, will be cited one of these days as a
miraculous circumstance. FALSTAFF lost his voice "by holloaing and
singing of anthems;" but in the meanwhile he gained flesh, as his
Holiness appears to have also done in a similar course of exercise. Many
prelates are oily enough; but the unction of the present Bishop of Rome
is peculiar. The Pontifical chair has often been said to be filled, but
now it is full, and no mistake. Perfidy, the Papists say, never
approached the see of PETER; however that may be, it certainly will be
difficult to circumvent its existing occupant, as his bulk will baffle
any attempt to get round him. Many of the Holy Father's predecessors
have been deep, but he is broad also.

We should have preferred rackets to billiards as a cure for the Papal
corpulence, if we thought the POPE could stand the rackets, as he will
have to do, whether he can