slight motion or sound, attract her attention, when she will turn off after a pause, and afford an excellent shot. A hare running across may be killed at a long distance with No. 5 shot-even heavier is used with deadly effect -but it is inconvenient to load with a larger size unless hares alone be looked for, which is seldom the case with the genuine sportsman. A thorough good gun will knock over a hare, running broadside, with 4 or 5 shot at seventy yards distance, but full elevation must be taken, and the gun smartly fired with the head well raised and the eyes kept steady upon the aim. If the reader consider for a very short space the effect of looking at the hare only at this long distance, he will at once perceive the rationale of not taking his sight along the rib, with his eye well down behind the breech, as is most erroneously recommended in a well-known book on shooting. Distance requires elevation in proportion. A rifle is fitted with graduated sights to meet this, but the elevation of the rib on a fowling-piece is fixed and immoveable. But by a simple law in perspective, when you look at a hare at seventy yards, bringing mechanically the sight at the muzzle to bear upon her, you must have the breech of the gun lower than if she were only forty yards off, whereas, if you adopt the one-eye system, you fire at exactly the same elevation at all distances, because your fowling-piece possesses only one fixed elevation. It is the non-perception of this that has given cause to so much bitter controversy on the effective range of fowling-pieces. It would be as absurd to take a level aim along the rib at seventy yards, as it would be to fire a rifle at a mark at two hundred yards with the sight set for one hundred.

No. X.-OCTOBER.

Then came October full of merry glee;

For yet his noule was totty of the must,
Which he was treading in the wine fat's see,
And of the ioyous oyle, whose gentle gust
Made him so frolick and so full of lust:

Upon a dreadfull scorpion he did ride,
The same which by Diana's doom uniust
Slew great Orion; and eeke by his side

He had his ploughing-share and coulter ready tyde.

SPENSER.

FROM what hidden springs does it flow that poets and sentimentalists have predilections for certain of the months, and antipathies to, or at least indifference for, others of equal claims? October has ever been a favourite, so has December, so has June, so has May; of the last we have already given our opinion as undeserving these laudations. But we willingly concur in praise of this autumnal month as one of the finest of the year. There is something matured about it. Like old wine, it is full of mingled fire and sweetness. The mornings are cool and bracing; there is a crispness in the air, which is free from humidity, saving these years, which we remark upon below.

one or two latter

But October is not

to be judged by these exceptional seasons. Let us blame the comets, now so numerously on their travels, and excuse the jolly old patriarch, who certainly has no reputed love for water. No; like St Mungo, he might drink of

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ye wimpling burne, quhan bettere he couldna pree," but rather would he quaff the must as it flowed from the purple wine-press until his old noule got totty; not tipsy, not drunk, mark you, but giddy a little-a slight after-dinnerishness, a post-prandial plenum of physical sensations without any derogatory mixture.

Sometimes, indeed, he wears a nightcap of mist in the mornings, analogous to the cranial confusion after “that last bottle which did the mischief," and which you always tell your wife you were reluctantly pressed to swallow by that sad fellow Jones. But the sun and he understand each other, and the morning haze is followed by all the brighter day.

Then as to clothing, what an eye for colour the old gentleman has got! Everything rich and ruddy, gorgeous with purple and yellow. Look up to the hills and mark their varied hues; to the woods and coverts, and let your eye be filled with their rich mosaic. And then at evening, when the sun goes down over the distant mountain peaks, how the skies in the west are draped in roseate clouds, and clouds of amber, and clouds of crimson, of that mingled red and orange, which no painter can match, let him mix his colours on his palette as he may. And between the blue above and the yellow below, as night falls in, the skies become of a greenish hue: and following the sun's track in the west, one bright star seems to witness to his glory, while further to the south the crescent moon, pale and wan, and wreathed in thin vapour, smiles faintly on the scene; not pretending to give light, but like a weeping maid distraught with love, following at a distance the god of her idolatry. Then

do we linger on the western mountain slopes until the skies become dark and suddenly darker still, forgetting earth and all its mingled joys and sorrows, until from our cottage window in the vale beams forth an arrowy ray, and with new feelings awakened, for we know the hand that lit the taper, and reminded of domestic bliss, "the only happiness that hath survived the fall," we hasten down to tell the glories we have seen; glories typical of greater hereafter, when the sun of this life goes down, and for which we have a natural yearning, as Hedderwick asks—

"How many stretch vain wings while doomed to plod
'Mong limed themes that snare the soul to earth!

In bloomy Paradise had Adam birth:

Say, does a memory of his first abode

Linger with man?"

This is the poetry of intellect, gracefully rendered. We like such. Let us, by way of contrast, give a descriptive address to October, beautiful of its kind:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells.

KEATS.

This is of that class of poetry which fills the eye with sensuous beauties. But give us that which awakeneth the intellect, touches the heart, and above all, draws forth the hidden analogies which pervade all nature, and link time and eternity, heaven and earth. It is this

analogy which is the true source of beauty, and the cause of our enjoying music, sculpture, painting, and above all, the glories of the skies at the rising and the setting of the sun. That poet who so stirs the intellect, and calls into life the perception of these inner truths, as far excels the merely descriptive as the architect does the mason. Therefore we say we prefer Hedderwick to Keats.

Whether or not the presence of a vast comet in our planetary system affects the weather, russet October has in this year of grace been, as far as it has gone, under a watery influence. We have somewhere heard of a farmer's barometer of so obstinate and contradictory a disposition, that it always would insist upon predicting the very opposite kind of weather to that really to be anticipated. The good man, annoyed beyond bearing at the refractory quicksilver, on one particularly wet day, when the index pointed to "Set Fair," relieved his exasperated feelings by carrying the instrument to the door to show it the thick descending rain, and exclaiming, "There, ye jaud, wull ye beleeve your ain een?" During the last fortnight or so this has been something of our own experience, and we have for the nonce lost all faith in philosophical weather-foretelling apparatus. Rain of peculiarly drenching powers, not always falling to the earth as well conducted drops ought to do under the laws of attraction, but playing up and down, getting under your umbrella, and insinuating itself into the folds of your cravat, is succeeded by regular down-fallers-thunder showers we might call them if they did not last for ten or twelve hours at a stretch. Flooded rivers, saturated coverts, and