that he will use the wisdom which his happier
life has taught him, for the truest and highest
good of him whose early words first stirred him
to activity.

He knows now, that this is his brother. Infirm
and crippled as he found him, changed in
all outward seeming, he never could have
known him, but that in his dim mutterings he
spoke of the little milkmaid sister, of the simple
active life of the plains, of the love of brethren,
and the tender care of fathers. And lo! in
these mutterings the Younger Brother heard a
language he once knew, but had long forgotten;
a music from the twilight time of childhood.

HUNTING THE STAG IN GERMANY.

"SIR," said the old forester, "times have
sadly changed. I remember when these hills
and valleys were left to the enjoyment of our
humble selves, when there was abundance of
everything at very cheap prices, when game was
so plentiful that royal stags ate the roses on the
walls of the duke's palace. Strangers came at
rare intervals, and were welcome guests at our
simple boards; but now there are railways and
steam-engines in all the land, people to whom
the commonest things in nature seem strange
have turned our houses into lodgings for the
season, the highest and most solitary of our
crags into retreats for discussing butter, bread,
and beer; and they have so pried into our little
secret places, and they eat so voraciously, that
we can't live in quiet or exist on our salaries.
They create new tastes and desires in the people
of these mountains, and we hear of offences
which were pretty well unheard of in our calendar."

"You remind me," I said, "of the American
borderer, who can't bear the sight of a human
being in his vicinity, and who tells you that his
reason for continually moving on into the wilderness,
is, that he won't hear the bark of his
neighbour's dog. Civilisation overtakes everything.
Your regrets are respectable, as the
French would say, but unavailing. What is
a curse to you, is a blessing to the world."

"No," broke out my friend, with that emphasis
which peculiarly characterises a German
when he says No to a thought unexpressed, because
it has only passed through the mental
phase: "no, it is too bad. Only think, sir;
his highness, my most gracious master, came
here one summer, about ten years ago, to shoot
the stag—a sly animal, which runs to cover at
the earliest streak of dawn. He rose at two,
and at three was standing in wait for his game,
when the stillness of the hour was broken by
the hollow tramp of some animal. The duke
cocked his gun as the tramping sounded on his
ear, and the branches of not very distant trees
crackled in the underwood: though, as a good
woodsman, he thought the sound unlike that
which a quadruped ought to make. The noise
ceased; the duke stood with his gun ready, his
left foot forward, when Doodle, doodle, dun! a
flute was heard; a flute, sir, played by some
infernal (excuse the word) love-sick Berliner. It
was not to be borne, sir. You go out into
distant and solitary places, you walk miles in
search of game, ana you find a mad traveller instead
of an antlered stag. His highness was in
such a rage, that he rushed home and went
to bed. I am not sure that his digestion was
not troubled—mine would have been; nor would
my humour have been improved by what followed
a few days after. The duke again, standing
in a close cover, was suddenly caught by
the arm at dawn, by a gentleman in white kid
gloves and a sky-blue stock, who, breaking the
stillness of the morning in tones loud enough to
frighten every buck within a mile, said, pointing
to his highness's gun:

"'What is that, sir?'

"'I believe,' said the duke, repressing his
rising anger, 'it is a rifle.'

"'A rifle!' said the other; 'how strange!
It has two barrels. I have often seen double-
barrelled rifles, but none like this. I had always
believed that the barrels were placed horizontally,
side by side, and those which I now see
are placed vertically, below each other. The
ramrod, too, is on one side, and not beneath the
gun.'

"The ox! the rindvich! what the deuce was
he doing at such an hour in the morning, in
white gloves and a blue stock, on the top of a
mountain? Could he not stay at home and
make his inquiries at an armourer's? No
wonder the duke was in a rage and vowed he
would never go stalking again."

"My good friend," I said, "I have heard of
similar complaints being made in my country,
where enthusiastic hunters also stalk the deer.
There, a remedy has been found, which has notable
disadvantages. The owners of the hills
have bought up the rights of way. Lapsed leases
have not been renewed, and, where houses have
stood, the ground has been cleared to its original
waste. The stag roams over the cold hearths of
expelled peasants; land which, if cultivated,
would produce hundreds of thalers, is thrown
into underwood; and the lords of the place
have no less an ambition than that the hills and
valleys in their possession should be restored
to the primitive solitude in which they were
during the wars of the early races. But do you
think that, a state of things that can last? Hunting
is no longer the occupation of a people; it is
the pastime of a gentleman; and we who like
sport, wish all the world were a hunting-field,
until the thought suddenly obtrudes itself that
it is not our wastes that give us the wealth
which helps us to the pastime. That wealth
comes from the labour of millions who must
congregate and work and communicate with
each other; and, therefore, the man in white
gloves and a blue stock is only one of a class
which must and will extend. So we must make
the best of things as they are, in this confined
world of ours, and, if we will insist on being
hunters, we must go to the Cape or the Indies
to shoot lions and bisons, or to the Americas to
drive the elk and prairie buffalo. Why, sir,