mencement of the outbreak, effected a junction with the force in the citadel, strengthened the defences, and brought in the stores treasure and ammunition under the protection of the guns, they might have shelled and laid the whole city in ashes, thus taking from the rebels their only shelter.

Who was to blame depends on how far the Government will allow the details of this wretchedly mismanaged and melancholy tragedy to transpire.

CHAPTER X.

Snipe shooting-Epistle on snipe shooting, from Ned Copper Cap, Esq., to George Trigger George Trigger's reply to Ned Copper Cap-Black partridge.

"Si sine amore jocisque

Nil est jucundum, vivas in amore jocisque."

-Horace.

"If nothing appears to you delightful without love and sports, then live in sports and love."

I LOVE shooting. It is enjoyed in the open air. It removes one from the vicinity of flat-roofed, candlepillared, sun-dried, brick-built, mulligatawny looking houses. You pursue it alone, or, in the society of a friend, equally well. Occasionally it is (I allow) rather hot work, but to a man whose particular taste may lead him to the viewing and enjoying the rays of that great luminary, the sun, shooting affords him the very best opportunity. A good day's snipe shooting is however, in my opinion, sufficiently exciting to keep away all thoughts and fidgetings about either his power, influence or effects.

As yet old Phoebus has behaved with great

liberality and kindness towards me, nor has he ever even shown an inclination in his hottest moments to quarrel. He has now, for some years past, thrown his burning beams pretty freely about my head when in pursuit of the snipe, and up to this day I am unscathed.

This, however, says nothing, for the old proverb hath it" What is one's man's meat is another man's poison." But physicians could, if they would, prove distinctly that when the system is under one particular excitement it is not subject to another. Hence my impunity may be due to my enthusiastic fondness for the sport.

To pursue snipe effectually, the sportsman requires many qualifications, among which I note the following unremitting fag and bottom, fortitude and some constitution. He should be almost impregnable to the approaches of diseases; to bogs, swamps, water, rain, sun, and chick-weed no stranger; be able to put up, comfortably and complacently, with wet feet, occasionally a wet jacket, sometimes a paucity of birds, a mahogany countenance, dry throat, and generally amphibious habits. All these enumerated qualifications are not drawbacks, but trifles in the estimation of the true sportsman; and, if I may speak for myself, or according to my feelings, doubting not but that I express those of most men devoted to the following of this elegant bird, I