would seem to those, who have never hunted, to make up the chief poetical elements of hunting. To Mr. Surtees belongs the credit of having established for ever a standard of humour in the novel that, as far as hunting is concerned, is not likely to be superseded. "I hope you read a chapter every day," said the father to his son. "Yes," said the son, "I always read a chapter of Jorrocks before I go to bed." The father was not thinking of Jorrocks, but the Bible. Walton's "Compleat Angler" perhaps holds a higher position, as a beautiful bit of inspired prose writing, than any book on sport that has ever been written, and Sir Edward Grey has told us how the book has grown into a part of his life. Sir Edward Grey is a born angler himself, but nobody who has any taste for a pure and old-fashioned style can fail to love the "Compleat Angler," though he may never have handled a fishing-rod in his life. In the same way Whyte-Melville, both in his poems and novels, has written about hunting, in such a way that a man need be no rider, and need perhaps never have seen a fox in his life, to appreciate both hunting novels and poems, and, if he has any humour at all, the same
