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Each eve, when the sun his race had run o'er cloud-laud's realms of gold,
() Herald, and Mute, and Mourning-Train, in plumed procession rolled :
With shrouded face and gliding pace, they passed in endless rank;
From the North they rose untiringly, and aye in the South they sank.

Hark, hark! how it creaks in the morning air, yon lattice neglectedly!
And yon low door-it never more to the living shall opened be.
'Tis padlocked and barred, but a surer guard is yon slender (2) Cross of Red,
And the pious scrawl, that seems to say: «None pass here, but the Dead!»

Strange sounds were heard, my comrades averred, but they all have died away,
Strange shadows were thrown on that lattice pane,but they vanished ere the day:
(3) To look within that lonely room not lightly would I dare;
For Rage and Fear were the Nurses here, the Comforter, Despair.

'Twas strange to behold how the signs did wave aloft in the sultry gale; Half touched below with the (') Bonfire's glow, and half with Moonshine pale: And ever they swang with a rusty clang; as ye hear, when the storm is high, Where the Pirate's bones on the gibbet swing, in irons harmoniously.

And 'twas strange to behold, as onward rolled our cart, with its lading grim, The motion queer and the gesture quaint, of each dank and stony limb, I thought, as I saw each quivering hand, and saw each nodding head, They were beating time to my merry chime: « BRING OUT, BRING OUT YOUR DEAD! »

(*) Stark Manhood lay there, with a bitter glare yet glimmering in his eye; And the Maid's long locks round the fingers were twined of span-long Infancy.

(') «One time, before the plague was begun, I think it was in March, seeing a crowd of people in the street, I joined them to satisfy my curiosity, and found them all staring up in the air, to see what a Woman told them appeared plain to her, which was Angel clothed in white, with a fiery sword in his hand, waving it, or brandishing it over his head.» Ib. 40.

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(*) «That every house visited be marked with a Red Cross of a foot long, in the middle of the door, and with these usual printed words; that is to say, «Lord have Vercy upon us, to be set close over the same Cross.»> Orders of the Lord Mayor. 1665. (*) «The very buryers of the dead, who were the most hardened creatures in the town, were some times so terrified, that they durst not go into the houses where whole families were swept away together, and where the circumstances were more particularly horrible.» Journal of the Plague Year. p. 58.

(*) a To London, and there I saw Fires burning in the streets, through the whole City, by the Lord Mayor's order. Thence by water to the Duke of Albemarle's (at Whitehall): all the way Fires on cach sides of the Thames.» Pepys' Diary. vol. ii.

(*) «The Cart had in it sixteen or seventeen Bodies; some were wrapped up in linen

All ruffled was the Old Man's beard, like corn by the gale laid low:
The Youth's lip yet with foam was wet-he had wrestled with the foe.

Their limbs were damp-the withering cramp had strangely twined them all,
As the branches are twined by the Hurricane, in guise fantastical.
On Babe and Maid, Priest, Bride, and Youth, the plague-seal ye might view:
For breast or thigh, the curious eye might trace the (') Tokens blue.

Thus on we rolled, while my song I trolled, till in Aldgate we ended our ride; And we set down our fare at a mansion fair, a Palace bright and wide: Though rough was the road, and our close-packed load was jolted grievously, No complaint did we hear from our passengers of pace or company!

O! (2) Aldgate Pit is a palace fit for the Pest-King's levee fair! With() lanterns dim 'tis lighted up, and torches' smouldering glare. To marshal the guests in order due were Chamberlains arrayed; And cach did hold, for Rod of Gold, the Mattock and the Spade.

My bones they lie in Aldgate Pit, in the fat loam mingled deep;
By Merchant, Knight, and Lady bright, full daintily they sleep :
If she turned in her shroud, that madam proud, for very shame she'd cry,
That the Bellman's bones in the lordly grave by her snowy side should lie.

The book-man may prate of the gallant state the Plague-King kept of yore,
Once in fair Athens' marble walls, and once by () Arno's shore;
But he triumphed best when in Aldgate Pit he held his levee dread,
When Bell I swung, and merrily sung: «BRING OUT, BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!

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sheets, some in rugs, some little other than naked, or so loose, that what covering they had fell from them, in the shooting out of the cart; and they fell quite naked among the rest; but the matter was not much to them, seeing they were all dead, and were to be huddled together into the common Grave of Mankind.» De Foe. p. 93. («The true pestilential spots, called the Tokens, were a gangrened flesh of a pyramidal figure, penetrating to the very bone, with its basis downward; altogether mortified and insensible, though a pin or other sharp body were thrust into it.»

Dr. Hodges, author of the Loimologia. ()«The great Pit in the church-yard of our parish of Aldgate: a terrible pit it was. It was about forty feet in length, and about fifteen or sixteen feet broad: it was, at the time I first looked at it, about nine feet deep; but it was said they dug it near twenty feet afterwards.>> De Foe. Memoirs. p. 88.

(*) « There were lanterns, with candles in them, placed all night round the sides of the Pit upon the heaps of earth, seven or eight, or perhaps more » De Foe.

() Plague of Florence. Boccaccio-Decamerone. 1. i.

P. 93.

BRITISH FIELD SPORTS.

1. NIMROD'S Hunting Tours.

8vo. London: 1833.

2. The Chase, the Turf, and the Road. By Nimrod, with Illustrations. 8vo. London: 1837.

3. Instructions to Young Sportsmen in all that relates to Guns and Shooting. By Lieut.-Col. P. HAWKER. 8th Edition. 8vo. London : 1838. 4. Sporting Scenes and Country Characters. By MARTINGALE. With numerous Illustrations on Wood. 8vo. London: 1840.

5 An Encyclopædia of Rural Sports; or, a Complete Account, Historical, Practical, and Descriptive, of Hunting, Shooting, Fishing, Racing, and other Field Sports and Athletic Amusements of the present day. By DELABERE P. BLAINE, Esq., Illustrated by Six Hundred Engravings on Wood. 8vo. London: 1840.

6. The Moor and the Loch. By JOHN COLQUHOUN, Esq. Second Edition. 8vo. London: 1841.

7. The Rod and the Gun; being two Treatises on Angling and Sporting. By JAMES WILSON, F. R. S. E., and by the Author of The Oakleigh Sporting Code.' Republished from the Seventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. 8vo. Edinburgh: 1841.

We have selected the works named at the head of this article as containing the most modern notions and improvements, and also as best calculated, for other reasons, to serve as specimens of their class.

In 'The Sporting Scenes and Country Characters,' by Martingale, we have a series of brief descriptions, well seasoned with precepts, and occasionally enlivened by anecdotes, of every kind of rural amusement, from stag-hunting to ratcatching.

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In Mr Blaine's Encyclopædia,' the entire science and history of the same topics are compressed. It is literally and faithfully what its name implies-a complete round or circle of sporting knowledge-a perfect manual for the amateur, who may turn to it with equal confidence, whether he wishes to learn how to train a fox-hound in England, or to kill a giraffe in Africa.

The fame of Nimrod' is universally diffused. He has done for fox-hunting what the editor of the Almanach des Gourmands effected for gastronomy, and the veriest Cockney may derive unmingled gratification from his writings; for, independently of the descriptive powers displayed in them, they form one of the richest funds of racy anecdote we are acquainted with. This is in some measure to be attributed to the privilege tacitly accorded to him of indulging, to an unlimited extent, in personal allusion.

As to the rest upon our list-Colonel Hawker expounds the whole rationale of Shooting with clearness, fulness, and vivacity; whilst Mr Colquhoun, with his freshness of description and instructive minuteness of detail, bears us off to the mountains, prepared for every change of weather or variety of country that may turn up. The treatise on Shooting, by the author of The Oakleigh Sporting Code,' is written upon a very comprehensive plan, and beautifully illustrated. Its companion on Angling is one of the most interesting, instructive, and agreeable treatises on the 'gentle art' that exists in our language; and will probably be noticed at greater length in a future article.

An unsophisticated observer, on his first visit to a hunting country, must instantly be struck by the magnificence of the establishments, as well as by the taste, inventive ingenuity, and scientific knowledge displayed in them-the kennels and stables built with far more regard to health and comfort than the dwelling-houses-the dogs and horses dieted according to the established principles of art-more pains taken with the education of a fox-hound than with that of a country gentleman fifty years ago, and as many delicate attentions lavished on a sick hunter by a nursing groom, as a lady of quality

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would receive from Sir Henry Halford or her waiting-maid. Then, how painfully would the sense of his own insignificance be forced upon him by the absorbing character of the pursuit -the complete devotion of all around him to the master passion-the entire subservience of thoughts, feelings, habits, senses, to the presiding influence or genius of the place! 'Pray, my lord,' said Nimrod to the present Duke of Cleveland, 'is not your kennel here very near the house? Does not the savour of the boiler sometimes find its way into the drawing-room?' 'It may,' replied his lordship, but we are all too well bred for fox-hunting to mind that.' Woe indeed to the wife, sister, or daughter, who betrays any feminine weakness in this respect, I was once present,' says Nimrod, ' when an anecdote was told of a gentleman having purchased a pack of fox-hounds; but, on their arrival at his kennel, his wife went into fits, in which she continued till the hounds were sent back again to their original owner.'-' If my wife had done so,' said Mr Corbet, I would never have kissed her again till she took off her nightcap, and cried Tally-ho.'

The best, perhaps only, way by which the female members of the family can preserve their empire under such circumstances, is to take the field in their own proper persons; and there are no want of examples to justify the step, as one of Nimrod's graphic sketches will make clear. The grand drawing-room at Raby Castle is the scene:

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The door opened with an announcement of Mr. Hodgson, my lord, and in walked Tommy Hodgson (the groom) presenting a full front to his master. No soldier on parade could present a better. No gate-post was ever straighter; no Shakspeare's apothecary was leaner; and the succession of lines from the forehead to the chin, too plainly showed that age had traced his cruel way over Tommy's honest face. Not a word escaped him until the marquis took his card the list of hunters fit for work presented daily) out of his pocket, and then the dialogue began. It was a rare speci

men of the laconic: Is Moses sound? Yes, my lord. I shall ride him-Also Bergami ?-Yes, my lord. Dick, Swing?-Yes, my lord. Will, Salopian?-Yes, my lord. Lady Cleveland, Raby?-Yes, my lord. Edward, the Parson? Yes, my lord. Lady Arabella, the Duchess?—Yes, my lord. George, Obadiah ?—Yes, my lord. That's all? Yes, my lord. Exit Tommy.)'

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