lands on the first rising of the twelfth. Cockneys and Gillies instead of now regarding each other as the hear-say never-see curiosities of their respective regions, exchange the slang of the day and the compliments of the season, like brothers born. The William Rufus roofed "neebor lad," who carries the accompaniments and leads the way, shall set himself going to the burden of "Lucy Neal," when a civil gentleman on Ludgate-hill shall stick a scarf into you, "in his own experience of the country", as a bona fide Drummond. How different all this from the days of the oldest inhabitant, when slow coaches and rough roads made a visit to the laird and his lands an event indeed, even to the most adventurous of Southerns, and when his clan stared at his friends as something of a cross between the infernal and the incomprehensible! About that era some friends of ours, who had pitched a tent and passed the night in the heart of "the heather-bloom," "discovered in the hazy light of a Highland morning, a shepherd (at some distance) intent upon their proceedings. At first the more they invited him to approach, the farther he receded the more they harangued, the more he seemed inclined to distrust; until at length the sight of a small whiskey measure did all that good words and signs had offered in vain. This, like the gibbet on the seashore to the shipwrecked mariner, at once satisfied him of the mortal condition of the invaders; and with this for an interpreter, he commenced an acquaintance that ended, as it began, in an acknowledgment of the many virtues in "mountain dew." But for this he might have returned to his cot to "dream of the good people," or perhaps the devil himself, instead of in that "fast and furious mirth which rendered him, like Tam O'Shanter, so superior to the ills of life, either real or ideal. For our own part, despite the petty sneer at London sportsmen, which is, in fact, more a bad habit than anything else, we are by no means disposed to quarrel with this rapid march of civilization. As the cheap newspaper people advocate general knowledge, with the sound logic of the more people there are able to read, the more likely will they be to sell their paper, so we flatter ourselves the more men have been on the moors, the more likely their appreciation of our August offering. It is a beautiful plate, though we say it who should not; and if it but induce one novice to attempt the reality, we think we have reason for adding, the chances are all in his favour. The Scotch and Welsh papers abound with reports on the abundance of grouse; so there must be plenty, if not room for every one. The season is early, all the world over, and the sport, consequently, even by the twelfth, should be something like strong work. The means of transfer are many and moderate, and the accommodation generally "no bad." "no bad." Our invitation to "walk up and judge for yourselves," must end here. In the whole fair we know of no exhibition more worthy of the public attention, while we are sure "no h'intelligent h'individual will h'allow so h'unequalled h'an h'opportunity to h'escape his h'inspection. Walk up once more, and all in to begin!"-(Exit barker, to set the first scene). THE SPORTSMAN'S DRESSING-ROOM; OR, A FEW WORDS ABOUT HUNTING COATS, BREECHES, BOOTS, SPURS, SADDLES, AND GUNS. BY ACTEON. The mutabilities of the present age are unspeakably great time was, and at no great distance either, when slang and vulgarity overspread the larger part even of the higher orders of British sportsmen. But a brighter day has dawned; and with the "three bottle" heroes have vanished the groom's dialect, the coachman's slang, and the low-bred bullying swagger of the prize-ring. Amongst the many features by which a sportsman and a gentleman are distinguished, perhaps there is not one which is more likely to stamp him, either alpha or omega, in "the eyes of the world" than his dress, or, in other words, after what fashion a man turns himself out, according to the amusement or calling he is about to pursue. That a peculiar style of dress is necessary for each of our national recreations must be admitted by every one more civilized than the denizen of the wilds of North America; but to dictate to any one the exact mode in which he is to dress himself, would be a piece of presumption which I should suppose the most arrogant minister of fashion would hardly dare to assume. The description of habiliments which would become one person, would, in all probability, sit like the lion's skin upon any other, and render the wearer the most perfect object of ridicule. Fancy Squire Osbaldeston "lavishly got up" like the Count D'Orsay, screaming to his hounds, when he had them, by the side of a Pytchley gorse cover, or the master of the Quorn kigged out in the tights and wrinkled Hessians of Romeo Coates. Still such absurdities as the last-mentioned gentleman have absolutely shown themselves in the hunting field of the Royal Buckhounds, and the vanity and self-love of the exhibiter led him to suppose that the Prince of Wales was struck with the neatness of the fit, and adopted the peculiar style of this pseudofashionable West Indian*. Lord Chesterfield, of Nepotic-literary renown, has said that a man ought to be rather over than under dressed ; in fact, according to Ude, dressed to a turn. His lordship, immoral as some persons may esteem him, was not altogether a bad judge, considering the times he lived in; however, I never much fancied him myself that is, his writings. He was guilty of one gross breach of decorum and taste, in my humble opinion-he sneered at foxhunters. But we are now talking about coats and boots and breeches, and not hounds, so let it pass. The celebrated Romeo Coates had the vanity to declare that he was the first person who set the fashion of wearing the boots pushed down in wrinkles, and which were afterwards much worn by the dandies of that day. Mr. Coates's boots had, however, one original recommendation-that was, of being waterproof; being made without a seam, of the skin of a horse's leg, blocked into shape, I A sloven in dress, nine times in ten, is the same listless performer of the ordinary or extraordinary duties of life. Again, a man may be got up with as much trouble and expense as the most correct dandy who perambulates the streets of London, and yet be the mere exhibiter of the most outrè taste and habiliments that it is possible to conceive; in fact, he may be what has been so expressively denominated a “ Bucknasty,” redolent of a mixture of frouziness and perfume, and eminently expressive of a taste at once jaunty and plebeian, dingy and yet tigerish in the most superlative degree. Badly-cut habiliments certainly denote poverty of taste, if they do not of the pocket; and I never meet with a man whose clothes are, as it were, chopped out in the country by the parish clerk, that I am not impressed with the idea that he is fondly wearing out the treasured heirlooms of his great-grandfather, or at best that he is some Sabine in easy circumstances, the homeliness of his garb keeping pace with the crudeness. of his ideas, and who has summed up courage to emerge from the chrysalis state of his solitude to stare with wonder and astonishment at the more glittering objects of a new and refined world. Although imitators in every branch in the arts and sciences are to be met with, in even the most remote districts of the globe, the mighty "Babylon" alone is the emporium where clothes of all descriptions, as well as each species and genus of implement used by flood and field, are to be obtained in that degree of perfection that can ensure satisfaction or success in the use of them to the purchaser; and this, with little exception, within one mile of the once favourite lounge, the White Horse Cellar, in Piccadilly. How extraordinary it is that, in a country like England, where good sense has generally predominated over whim, and where the useful and comfortable have, in most instances, been preferred to the mere expedients adopted by the eccentric or parsimonious, the hunting-coat should have been allowed to retain a shape, during so many years, the most unsightly and comfortless that can encumber the back of a sportsman! The fashion of wearing evening coats in the field is certainly a custom the most absurd, as that part which ought necessarily to be as well protected from the cold and wet, as even the back itself, viz., the lower regions of the stomach and groin, are necessarily left exposed to the weather; and I am well convinced that no one who had ever been in the habit of wearing the old-fashioned and now nearly exploded huntsman's frock, with its close fitting and weather-proof flaps, would ever wish to exchange so great a comfort for the ridiculous swallow-tailed affair of comparatively modern invention. In these extra-refined days of universal dandyism and rage for fancy uniforms, if the old coat above alluded to may be deemed too vulgar and antediluvian to be allowed to grace the back of the modern foxhunter, why not have something invented in which might be combined comfort as well as appearance? A garment so truly "simplex munditiis" as the coat worn by her Majesty's watermen, with a few trifling alterations, would afford a pattern for a dress at once the most agreeable and appropriate that could be conceived for a horseman's use. There is one very remarkable thing with regard to the cutting of all kinds of coats, taking the whole list of tailors from Dan to Beersheba, from the legion in Conduit-street or Bond-street, to the indefatigable Jew monster of Aldgate Pump, that hardly one can be found who can produce a garment where the skirts are not purposely made to point towards the horse's tail, as if intended to brush away the flies from the animal's quarters, instead of hanging gracefully down his sides. These knights of the shears one would suppose have only studied the art of “getting up" dandies of the peripatetic school, without having made themselves anatomically and scientifically acquainted with either the comfort or appearance of a well-dressed horseman. The next article of dress which I shall notice are breeches; the material of which, in the fast countries, should be invariably of leather; but in the provincials or back-wood settlements, cotton or worsted cords are undoubtedly admissible; and wonderful as it may appear, there are not above three tradesmen worthy of the title of professors of the artwe might almost say science of producing these necessary appendages to the sportsman's wardrobe, in the whole of this vast metropolis. The great difficulty is in cutting them sufficiently long in the fork to prevent them riding up, and parting company at the knees with the boot-top, or "risiting" as it is facetiously expressed by the more slanggy of the artistes; and where this difficulty has been obviated, the cutter more usually than not runs into the extreme of slangginess and bad taste by carrying the knee-buttons directly down the front of the shin, or even what is still worse, across it, giving one the idea of "first turn out" of by-gone days on the Hounslow-road. There is another material of which hunting breeches are occasionally made, and worn by those men who prefer the economy of the wash-tub to being well valeted by a good breeches cleaner; it is made of wool, and the resemblance so good that at a short distance few can distinguish the counterfeit from the real leathers. It has been the fashion for some years past, to prefer excessively light top-boots in the hunting-field: in fact, everything connected with the chase seems to be tainted with a sort of mania smelling excessively strong of the racing stable. Hunters are trained, sweated, and set, like the race-horse, to prepare them for the quick things of modern days; gentlemen-sportsmen ride with cutting jockey-whips instead of the more appropriate thong. And to keep up the character, boots, breeches, and saddles are made proportionally light and useless, the wearers forgetting that during an hour's run across a severe and enclosed country there are innumerable "little objects" to be encountered in the various rasping bullfinches which are penetrated, in the shape of blackthorns and stubs of trees, and which are never encountered upon a race-course; but all this comes of that unsportsmanlike, horse-dealerish pastime the steeplechase. A pretty figure a man would cut after being obliged to dismount in a Leicestershire gateway, where the mud had been well tempered during the preceding wet night by a dozen Scotch bullocks; but such things are liable to occur to the fastest and cleverest of horsemen, where the gate, which may be the only practicable way out of the field, is fastened up, or too heavy to lift off the hinges without dismounting. All men don't jump gates; perhaps they can't, after "Fifty minutes so ripping, which must be confessed The long black jacks, although sported a good deal by many "holiday fox-hunters," are, in my humble opinion, perfectly inadmissible, excepting for what they were first intended, viz., salmon-fishing and sniping, and are generally seen accompanied by elaborate shawl ties, monster pins, and fancy waistcoats. A top-boot, to be properly made, should come up so as to cover the lowest button of the breeches-knee, and should be attached to that button by means of a loop of catgut, which gives a less strain upon the button, when attaching it, than if it were made of leather, and makes the top sit closer to the leg; it should also be buttoned in the same manner behind, allowing none of the stocking to appear: this is difficult to achieve with some gentlemen whose calves are of the order of London footmen*, and a real horseman's leg ought to be as lean and wiry as the limb of a greyhound. I have seen a few men, who really ought to have had better taste, not only dress so as to show the stocking above the top of the boot, but absolutely to sport pink silks, and amongst them I may enumerate the late Sir Harry Goodricke, well known as one of the most bruising riders ever seen in Leicestershire, and who at one time obtained the unenviable soubriquet of "the butcher," from his cutting a horse's throat in the middle of a run, and which had broken its leg. Only fancy cutting a horse's throat in pink silk stockings! Sir Harry however is gone; so let him, keen sportsman as he was, rest in peace. The subject of the spurs may seem almost too immaterial to be mentioned here, but it is a most undeniable fact that not one man in fifty knows how to put them on when he has got them. The under spurleather is invariably, as turned out of the shop, cut too long; consequently the spur, when worn, is thus placed above the heel instead of nearly at the bottom of it. Experience makes fools wise; and the misery of having the heel dreadfully scarified by the horse treading upon the neck of one's spur when scrambling up after a fall, is quite sufficient to bear me out in my recommendation to wear the spurs placed rather low on the boot, in the manner I have described. A saddle" Well! but saddles have no business to be kept in a man's dressing-room!" Perhaps not; but, nevertheless, if I had only one good horse, and one real good London hunting saddle, I would rather keep it in my dressing-room, or even make a pillow of it, than see it kicking about all the summer in a nasty half kept harness room, as many are, to be utterly destroyed by mice, moths, and mildew. Besides, as I know a sportsman who is never measured for his hunting coat unless *It may, perhaps, be not generally known to all our country readers, that one of the greatest essentials, with regard to the recommendation of a London footman, is not only his height, but the size and form of his legs, veal being at a high price in the" lackey market" of the metropolis. A friend of the author's, who once lived in one of the leading squares at the West-end, had occasion to hire a new footman. The man arrived; but for the two or three first days was absent from his post at the hour of his master's dinner. Upon inquiry being made of the butler why the new footman did not make his appearance, the excuse given was, that "the man's calves had not yet come home." "What!" said the astonished master, "what do you mean?" "Why sir," replied the major domo, "the man's legs are not quite so well formed and large as is consistent with bis calling, and he has been obliged to have recourse to those artificial means which are resorted to by great numbers of the fashionable footmen in London, viz., to order a pair of sham calves,' and I am sorry to say that the man who makes them has disappointed him, from the vast quantity which he has had orders for at this season of the year. However, he will be ready to appear by dinner time to-morrow." |