before taking the seat of Solomon, look into the
shops and dwellings all around the Temple, and
first ask themselves "how much more can these
poor people— many of whom keep themselves
with difficulty enough out of the workhouse—
bear?"

I had yet other matter for reflection, as I
journeyed home, inasmuch as, before I altogether
departed from the neighbourhood of Mr.
Baker's trap, I had knocked at the gate of the
workhouse of St. George's-in-the-East, and had
found it to be an establishment highly creditable
to those parts, and thoroughly well administered
by a most intelligent master. I remarked
in it, an instance of the collateral harm that obstinate
vanity and folly can do. "This was the
Hall where those old paupers, male and female,
whom I had just seen, met for the Church
service, was it?"— "Yes."— "Did they sing
the Psalms to any instrument?"— "They would
like to, very much; they would have an extraordinary
interest in doing so."— "And could
none be got?"— " Well, a piano could even
have been got for nothing, but these unfor-
tunate dissensions— " Ah! better, far better,
my Christian friend in the beautiful garment, to
have let the singing boys alone, and left the
multitude to sing for themselves! You should
know better than I, but I think I have read
that they did so, once upon a time, and that
"when they had sung an hymn," Some one (not
in a beautiful garment) went up unto the Mount
of Olives.

It made my heart ache to think of this
miserable trifling, in the streets of a city where
every stone seemed to call to me, as I walked
along, "Turn this way, man, and see what
waits to be done!" So I decoyed myself into another
train of thought to ease my heart. But, I
don't know that I did it, for I was so full of
paupers, that it was, after all, only a change to
a single pauper, who took possession of my remembrance
instead of a thousand.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he had said, in a
confidential manner, on another occasion, taking
me aside; "but I have seen better days."

"I am very sorry to hear it."

"Sir, I have a complaint to make against the
master."

"I have no power here, I assure you. And if
I had—"

"But allow me, sir, to mention it, as between
yourself and a man who has seen better days,
sir. The master and myself are both masons,
sir, and I make him the sign continually; but,
because I am in this unfortunate position, sir,
he won't give me the countersign"!

SEVENTY YEARS' FOX-HUNTING.

THE life of a man with one idea, riding the
best horses and keeping close to the hounds
over the broad pastures of the "shires," this
is the task that the "Druid"— so called, it is to
be presumed, from his affection for the Oaks (of
Epsom)— executed, with a oneness of purpose
and extinction of self truly astonishing, when,
note-book and pencil in hand, he sat beside the
veteran in a gig and made him

Flourish his whip and show where fields were won.

The theme of "this old man eloquent"
may rather jar on the nerves of worthy
folks who look upon hunting as an idle and
foolish amusement, a waste of time and money,
a needless endangering of brains and bones.
Walter Scott's friend, the Antiquary, thought
that a walk from his library to his garden once
a day was enough for any one but a fool or a
fox-hunter. But hunting in England is, in
modern slang, a great fact, and All the Year
Round would never complete its circle without
some minutes given to an amusement
only less popular than dominoes and dancing in
France— an amusement which occupies at least
ten thousand souls of high and low degree
six days in the week— walking or riding, running,
staring, or looking after or about the one hundred
and fifty packs of hounds which, from
the 1st of November to the last day of April,
are occupied in chasing fox or hare. Debate
how you will, hunting is an integral part of
English life. Hunting phrases are incorporated
in the English language. The hunter-horse is
specially English, and the Englishman's seat on
horseback is neither mediæval, nor military, nor
Oriental, but a hunting seat. It was with a
hunting seat that Cromwell's Ironsides rode
down Rupert's finished Cavaliers, " beat them,
broke them, drove all adrift."

Young England may fairly be divided into
those who do ride, and those who would ride if
they could. For these reasons, our gravest and
most devoted pedestrians will perhaps listen, if
it be only as a matter of curiosity, to the autographical
reminiscences of Dick Christian Laban,
recorded in "Silk and Scarlet," a book written
by The Druid. Dick Christian is the fakir,
bonze, dervish, or high-priest of the fox-hunting
faith; Dick Christian's memories extending
back to 1790, before the French Revolution,
before the French Republic and Empire, before
Aboukir, Trafalgar, and Waterloo, before Railroads,
Steam-Boats, Photographs, Reform Bills,
Free Trade, Electric Telegrams, and Universal
Exhibitions.

This garrulous and very equestrian gossip we
have reduced to order and sequence, thinking
that some lives may not be less amusing than the
many lives of tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, gentleman,
ploughboy, apothecary, thief, which are
not the least thumbed volumes of a free library
in a great city.

"I was born," says Dick, "in March, '79.
Collesmere was my native place." A very appropriate
place for such a character, the Collesmere
pack being the oldest in England.
"Father wanted to have made me a scholar,
but I was all for horses, and in room of going
to school I always slipped down to Stevenson,
Sir Horace Mann's head groom at the
Riding-school, and rode the horses till the boys
came out, then off I slips home to my dinner