unbridled ambition, characterised by a tendency
to universal monopoly. You know that the
colour red, so beloved by savages, is the emblem
of ambition. The Analogist foresaw what has
happened; namely, that the beetroot, a native
of cold climates, which is only capable of
producing spurious sugar, would not be satisfied
with substituting its disloyal produce for the
genuine sugar of the cane; but that, as soon as
it had obtained the monopoly of that precious
article, it would audaciously aspire to rob the
vine of the privilege of supplying wine and
alcohol, and would not even shrink from the
insane attempt to supplant the coffee-tree in the
production of Mocha. The Analogist foresaw
all that, and cried aloud on the house-tops. But
no one regarded him; his voice was lost in the
wilderness. The insolent, protected beetroot
has been dragging France through such sloughs
of dirt, that at last it can be borne no longer."

Tousseuel, the Analogist, has not grown milder
with age; but he is comforted with the prospect
of a better time coming, although his own
personal enjoyment is thereby likely to be curtailed.
To explain: the Analogist is an ardent
snipe-shooter. Of all sport, successful sport in the
marshes is the highest attainment of the art. La
chasse au marais, marsh-shooting, has
intoxicating seductions, irresistible allurements, which
throw everything else into the background. To
give it up, is to lose sporting caste. No sport
stimulates to so high a degree the combined
enthusiasm of soul and sense. None exacts
like it the double sureness of eye and foot, the
passion of art united to a temperament of iron,
and contempt of fevers and colds in the head, a
cordial understanding between the sportsman
and the dog. The snipe is the reward of the
strong and the prize of the skilful. Snipe-shooting
is the solemn test which settles precedence
amongst the upper ranks of sportsmen.
It can even render an Englishman almost
respectable in M. Toussenel's eyes. Afflicted with
chronic Anglophobia, the Analogist can yet speak
in not very harsh terms of the considerable
emigration of British sportsmen— all cut after the
same pattern, long, dry, upright, without any
joints, but in other respects the best guns in the
world, and worthy to carry the standard of St.
Hubert— who pursue the snipe through its
favourite haunts, even to the Pontine Marshes.
They boldly scorn all vulgar fear of the buffalo,
the wild bull, and the malaria— three obstacles
which Nature might be supposed to have placed
as guardians on the frontiers of the Holy City,
to prevent the entrance of misbelieving
sportsmen. A poor defence, after all, the fever of
malaria turns out to be! These wicked heretics
have discovered that the true specific against
paludian fever is, not sulphate of quinine, as
has been hitherto believed, but hashed snipes,
liberally washed down with the oldest claret. It
seems that Providence, ever propitious to the
hunter, had placed the remedy by the side of the
disease. The chase is the mother of arts, and
the first of the fruits of the tree of knowledge.

It was not in Italy, however, but in France,
that the Analogist had the opportunity of studying
the snipe-shooter of Albion, and of
appreciating his high and powerful moral and stomachic
faculties. The marshes of France, in consequence
of their mediterranean position, have long
been the compulsory halting-place of the Scan-
dinavian snipes during their half-yearly travels to
the south and back. There is, on the confines of
Berry and Touraine, an unknown district, which
is called La Brenne, after the name of its Roman
explorer, Brennus. Of all the cantons of France,
with the exception of the crown preserves and
those of M. de Gâville, La Brenne is the most
abundant in all sorts of game. The stag, the
wild-boar, the roebuck, and the wolf are not
unknown animals there; the great bustard and
the swan are abundant in severe winters. Hares
are still sold there at from ten to fifteen pence
a piece, a red-legged partridge for sevenpence-
halfpenny, and woodcocks at about the same
price. But it is the water-fowl which has
hitherto been the glory of La Brenne, which is
a sandy plain, half water, half land, an adorable
desert in the eyes of the artistic sportsman, a
series of swamps, wherein the fresh-water
tortoise flounders at ease, where quails remain all
winter long, and where an estate of fifteen
hundred acres is let for a rental of two hundred
and forty pounds, and is sold in fee simple for
four thousand eight hundred pounds. It was in
La Brenne that the Analogist had the good
fortune to admire, in the person of a child of
Albion, the sublime union of the perfect
snipe-shooter with the just and decided man of
Horace's ode — justum ac tenacem propositi
virum. This mortal, unique in his class, had
made a vow, when he came to La Brenne, never
to shoot any other game than snipes. He had
shot there for twenty years, and he had fired
twenty thousand shots, without once failing in
his engagement without ever having menaced
the life of a hare or a partridge. So that those
creatures, aware of his habits, instead of
escaping at his approach, came forward to have a
look at him. A capital shot, moreover, and modest
in proportion, never saying, "I have killed"
but "I have seen so many snipes to-day."

But the end of these glorious days is
approaching. Agricultural Reform is coming to
claim her prey. The drainer, the leveller, the
stubber-up of rotten stumps, are threatening to
bleed the country at every vein, under the
pretext of sanitary improvement. Cabbages will
soon grow on the domain of the bustard; the
snipe will shortly disappear, the victim of
progress; and yet the analogistic sportsman has
the philosophy to master his grief, through the
consideration that the marshes of La Brenne
are not, like the Pontine Marshes, a divine
institution, a portion of the realm of an infallible
ruler, but the work both of human agency and
of human neglect. What man has made, he
thinks, man may always unmake. In short, M.
Toussenel, who has the acumen to detect in
various birds the type of every phase of human
nature, has thrown a new light on the Roman
Question by informing us that not only the