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COUNTRY SQUIRES.

JUDGE BLACKSTONE, in his commentaries upon the laws of England, has contrived to treat excellently well a subject commonly held to be dry and repulsive, and with less of dryness and repulsiveness than frequently belongs to sciences far more popular than law. There is considerable mildness in his gravity, and he sometimes indulges in a little sally of satire, after a fashion equally pleasant and unassuming. Thus when speaking of the laws respecting the rights of the chase, &c. he mentions that Cæsar said of the Germans, "vita omnis in venationibus atque in studiis rei militaris consistit ;" and Tacitus said that "quoties bella non ineunt, multum venatibus plus per otium transigunt ;" and, indeed, continues Blackstone, "like some of their modern successors, they had no other amusement to entertain their vacant hours, despising all arts as effeminate, and having no other learning than was couched in such rude ditties as were sung at the solemn carousals which succeeded these ancient huntings."

Since Blackstone's time, which is "sixty years since," or thereabouts, be the same more or less, the race of English hunting squires, whom he no doubt points at in these remarks, has much decayed. Is this a circumstance at

which to rejoice? Have their successors become honester or better men?

Lord Byron, in some of the freest and least affected of his lines, has said

"There are now no Squire Westerns as of old, And our Sophias are not so emphatic,

But fair as then, or fairer to behold;

We have no accomplish'd blackguards, like Tom Jones, But gentlemen in stays, as stiff as stones."

Undoubtedly there is something too much of this even in the country, and one is doomed over and over again to see those who ought to know better, sacrificing that heartiness and rustic fervour, which would well become them, to a nice fastidiousness and an aping of the fine gentleman, which is at once absurd and hurtful. Certainly a man may do better than gallop about every day that he does not shoot, and then get drunk and clamorous after dinner. I do not want that extreme as a profitable reform of existing habits, but I would have people remember that the country is country, and should be treated accordingly. The indifference, the fastidiousness, and the looking to one's self alone, which grow out of metropolitan habits, where the intrusion of the multitude would be unbearable, and where there is an opportunity, if not a necessity, for hundreds of different sorts of occupation-these things are nothing better than churlishness or effeminacy in the country. In the country, every one is of some importance

to his neighbours, and this he should remember. He cannot get rid of people as in town, nor can people get rid of him, and (if need be) he should be ready to "suffer for his country." But there ought not to be any suffering in the case; nor would there be, if ladies and gentlemen would be pleased but to cultivate kindness and cordiality of manners, with but half the assiduity which they are willing to devote to artificial pomp and preposterous affectations.

PARKS AND GAME.

BLACKSTONE has another "satiric touch" when he comes to treat of "Parks." A forest, he says, being in the hands of a subject, is properly the same thing with a chase, being subject to the common law and not to the forest laws. But a chase differs from a park, in that it is not enclosed, and also in that a man may have a chase in another man's ground as well as in his own, being indeed the liberty of keeping beasts of chase or Royal game therein, with a power of hunting them thereon. "A park is an enclosed chase extending only over a man's own grounds. The word park, indeed, properly signifies an enclosure, but yet it is not every field or common which a gentleman pleases to surround with a wall or paling, and to stock with a herd of deer, that is thereby constituted a

legal park: for the King's grant, or at least immemorial prescription, is necessary to make it so." Presently afterwards the Learned Judge waxes almost abusive, telling his readers that beasts and fowls of warren, which, as fera naturæ, every one had a natural right to kill as he could, were looked upon after the Norman conquest, and the introduction of the forest laws, as "Royal game, and the sole property of our savage Monarchs."

Sir Edward Coke says, that beasts of park or chase are properly buck, doe, fox, martin, and roe, but, in a common and legal sense, extend likewise to all the beasts of the forest; which besides the other, are reckoned to be hart, hind, hare, boar, and wolf, and, in a word, all wild beasts of venery or hunting. The beasts of warren he says, are hares, coneys, and roes; the fowls of warren are either campestres, as partridges, rails, and quails, or sylvestres, as woodcocks and pheasants, or aquatiles, as mallards and herons. Manwood, an old writer of great authority in forest law, says, that the hart and the hind and the hare are beasts of the forest; the buck, the doe, and the fox are beasts of the chase; the hare, the coney, the pheasant, and the partridge are beasts and fowls of warren. The game of free warren he also defines to be such as may be taken with long-winged hawks. Some years ago it was decided in Westminster Hall that grouse are not birds of warren.

Blackstone says, there were many instances of keen sportsmen in ancient times who have sold their estates, and reserved the free warren, or right of killing game, to themselves. The practice has so much changed since Blackstone's day, and even within the last five years, that it has become no uncommon thing for persons who keep their estates to sell their game. Not being a favourer of the mercantile interest in such matters, I would recommend that both practices should be avoided, and that the game and the estate should remain in the same hands.

COMMERCE AND TASTE.

SOME years ago the President of the Royal Academy (Sir M. A. Shee), in an address to the students of painting, stated his opinion that the application of commercial principles to the pursuits of taste, and the want of a patronage similar to that which the old masters received from the Church, were two of the causes which had checked the ardour of the British students. Herein his Presidentship did, in my humble judgment, rightly speak; and I fear that things even more important than those which come within the limits of "the pursuits of taste," have had a downward tendency, in consequence of the application to them of "commercial principles." So long as commerce is kept within its