classes, when boxers were the pets of nobles and princes. The sparring among the costers is not for money, but for beer and a "lark"; a convenient term, covering much mischief. Two out of every ten landlords, whose houses are patronized by these lovers of the art of self-defence, supply gloves. Some charge 2d. a night for their use; others only 1d. The sparring seldom continues long, sometimes not above a quarter of an hour; for the costermongers, though excited for a while, become weary of sport in which they cannot personally participate. The stake is usually a "top of reeb," and the winner is the man that gives the first noser resulting in blood. The costermongers boast of their skill in pugilism, as well as at skittles. "We're all handy with our fists" (said one man), "and are matches, aye and more than matches for anybody but reg'lar boxers. We have stuck to the Ring, too, and gone reg'ler to the Fights more than any other men." Yes; there is no doubt whatever that these gentlemen have stuck to the ring more tenaciously than any other set, not even excluding the chimney-sweeps of St. Giles's, and the shop snobs of the slums. "Faithful amongst the faithless," have these low fellows ever proved themselves, if Mayhew be not a myth, and his London Life a lie.

TERRIERS.

"I tell you, I'me afeard on 'em; and let no dog bark at me, or I'll take the law on his master." So be it, thou brave and lion-hearted Englishman! Now to our narrative. On the 24th of March last, there was a case (Emery v. Peake) of alleged dog-biting, tried at Warwick, the upshot of which was that the Rev. Mr. Peake, the owner of two little pet dogs, had to pay the plaintiff £60, as compensation for damages, and about £100 besides, as costs! Cockaigne's cor rosive Sunday papers were eloquent upon the subject. The jury were extolled to the skies, and poor parson Peake got nothing but kicks. Such a storm, indeed, of indignant reprobation, with such showers of Sunday-paper sneering scarcasm, has seldom fallen upon the devoted head of any man, and all because his wife had two canine pets of the Skye terrier genus. Mind what you are about, all you good folks who don't like curs, but keep, instead of mongrels, a lively little terrier or two. A dear luxury it may turn out to have a Dandie Dinmont in your house or grounds! What happened to Parson Peake t'other day may perhaps happen to you some day; and in these fine times of finance, with an income-tax as a culminating point of pocket-exhaustion, £160 or so may possibly be " an object" to you, or at all events you may not have any especial relish to have even £100 actually squeezed out of your purse, by a pitiful, sneaking plaintiff and an attorney whose costs are his conscience and robbery his religion. Yet such a contingency is conceivable. In fact, some twenty years ago, just what I am mentioning, happened to me. I don't imply that anything at all like has happened since.

The facts of the case (Emery v. Peake) seem, shortly stated, these Mrs. Peake, the vicar's wife, was walking out one day, accompanied, as was usual with her, by her two little canine companions, when a working gardener apparently disturbed by his presence the even tenor of the two terriers' way, and, upon the tit-for-tat principle it is

L

presumed, he was disturbed in his turn by the dogs, who not only barked both together at him, but one of them, as he alleged, bit him just above the ancle. The bite brought on, in the order of things, a doctor's bill of between three and four pounds, and as naturally brought on also abstinence from work.

That the bite" absolutely required a doctor, and that the man's not going to work as usual, and that he is injured for life by said "bite-all this is very likely to be quite true and no fiction. But a canine case may occur, in which you may be defendant; and if it do, you may be as sure of having it served up with the same sort of garniture as of having your Michaelmas goose served up with the same sort of sauce you always have.

In the vicar's affair, "Mustard" and "Pepper" (Mr. Peake had had one of the terriers for seven years), was amusingly described in behalf of the plaintiff as of the "Skye and Otter breed"-that they attacked him, and in regular dog-fashion," "like lions ;" (so lions and dogs are one and the same!) and that this pair of little Scotch or toy terriers "bore a furious character.” A furious fiddlestick! But by the law of England (not of Scotland) the plaintiff is bound to prove that he was bitten by a dog of bad character. Accordingly, the defendant was charged with keeping dogs of "a savage and ferocious nature, and accustomed to bite mankind"!! And the jury, thinking the charge sustained by evidence, gave the plaintiff £60 out of the £100 which he claimed as compensation. Cave, amici-the keeping of a toy-terrier or lap-dog by your lady may, perchance, turn out a costly and a troublesome affair too. Plague upon plaintiffs, I say!

THE PACE

At which "Old Grey's" good blowing up of "betting blockheads and sporting snobs" went spinning last month in this magazine, is mended by another goer in Charlie's stable; for Household Words starting the other day Thurtell and Palmer as animals who ought to have been strangled in their birth (I wish the cold-blooded, treacherous miscreants had) writes-" Both were members of that vermin race of outer bettors and blacklegs, of whom some worthy samples were presented on both trials, and of whom, as a community, mankind would be blessedly rid, if they could all be, once and for ever, knocked on the head at a blow." Who precisely the "outer bettors" are, we don't profess to know. But presuming they are a "vermin race," I certainly shall not protest against their summary extinction in the way proposed by the popular writer. Betting may be divorced from racing, not only without injury to the latter, which is the great national recreation of a free people, but not impossibly with great benefit. Still, it is something in its favour that it has stood its ground for centuries in spite of all the means of all opposition. Here it is still, although there have been opposed to it "all the means derived by wit, by sarcasm, by contempt, by abuse.' But extirpate, by all means, the "vermin race of outer bettors." Kill them all off-if indeed they survive the onslaught of "Old Grey," who seems in his glory when lashing the sporting snobs and betting black guards of his brain's creation-I was going to say; but there's really a regular army of 'em, especially about Leicester-square and the Haymarket.

KILLARNEY-HOW TO SEE IT, AND WHERE TO FISH IT.

BY ONE OF THE RAKES OF MALLOW.

Reader, did you ever visit Killarney? No! then you have a pleasure in store that will amply repay a visit. I did visit it last May for the (at least) tenth time, and still were there new beauties springing up before me. Now views of lake, of mountain, of glen, and waterfall! Dear old Killarney! now as dear to me as when twenty years since I rambled along thy fairy lakes and giant mountains; and although time has turned my locks a little grey and slightly rounded my back, yet I felt the same bounding rush of blood along my veins as when I last visited thy romantic beauties; and a refreshing feeling came across my recollections of olden days, while I turned, as it were, the leaves of the scenery before me, and contemplated with the eye of an amateur the infinite variety of beauties here so profusely flung by the bountiful hand of Nature. There is the landscape, with its fairy lakes singularly beautiful, trees most picturesque ; cattle in rural nooks; the winding walk to Dinas; the magnificent views to be traced (as in a kaleidoscope) as you wind along the well-kept roads of Ross Island; the pretty cottages sprinkled here and there, with their rustic beauties laid out in the most charming style-all so calm, yet grand; so fanciful, yet true. There only are the feelings of the artist to be roused, and the still nobler emotions felt by the lover of Nature excited to the utmost. All around is wonderful: the eye roams continually over new beauties, even from the edge of the lake upwards along the mighty mountains

and

"Into the air, the viewless air,

To be lost there."

In one of my visits to Killarney, several years ago, I met Sir Walter Scott, who, with Miss Edgeworth, was then on a week's sojourn at Finn's Hotel, in the town, but who almost lived on the lake, spending their days from "early morn till dewy eve" either boating or driving about to see the inland wonders. To this day the boatmen do not forget his visit, but will stop at the different points which he admired, for the purpose of pointing them out to their visitors. In my visit the other day, as I rounded the point outside Dinas Cottage, the boatman called out

"Stop yer fishing a bit, gintlemin, if ye please, till I show you what Sir Walter Scott, the great geographer from England, said was the finest sight in the world, and he had a young gentleman with him that he made take down the view on paper, and he did it quite natural; and the lady that was with him showed it to me, and I liked it so well that she made him draw out my own picture and give it to me, and I have it still at home in the frame of the ould fourpenny looking-glass that the childer broke playing ball."

I did look up, and there was Dinas Cottage, with its splendidly wooded back-ground looking towards Turk Cottage and the mountain of Mangerton. The scene here is, indeed, grand: worthy of the admiration of the highland chieftain's classic bard.

I am not going to write anything new about Killarney: my readers will be much mistaken if they fancy that. It is indeed a wide field for gleaning in; but it has already been reaped and gathered, and explored and gathered again and again: if I am able to pick up even a few straws, it will be evidence of the carefulness of my research. Mr. and Mrs. Hall's "Killarney" has said so much and so well, that it takes almost the freshness from the tales of the most loquacious of all gossipers, the Killarney boatmen. With few faults as a hand-book for travel in these romantic regions, with an abundance of improbable stories and amusing sketches of Irish character, it is without doubt the most clever, entertaining, and well-contrived guide to Killarney ever published.

The politeness of the Kerry peasant is as well known as his learning: there are more copies of Virgil and Sallust in the mountain homes of the country people than would be credited were I to guess at the number. One incident which was related to me by a lady who was stopping at Muckross Hotel, will evidence their "very pink of polite

She said as she was walking to the upper lake under Turk Waterfall she met a countryman driving a donkey towards Killarney, loaded with two hampers of turf. At this moment a sudden gust of wind from the hills, so prevalent here, swept the parasol from her hand and carried it over the wall away towards the lake. The peasant was not long in bounding after it, and returning, presented it to her with a low bow (hat in hand), saying, "My lady, here is your sun-shade. If you were only as strong as you are handsome, 'tisn't a storm would be able to take it from you." She replied she was much obliged, and did not know which most to thank him for, his gallantry or his service. "Sure, my lady," was the polite reply, "the glance of your beautiful eye is more payment than both are worth."

The man of business, whose time is precious, yet who would fain see all in a few days; or the man who can saunter along slowly to kill time, will find Muckross Hotel, situated as it is in the centre of the beauties of the lakes, the most convenient home during his residence amongst the "arbutus groves." It is about three miles from the town of Kil. larney, within a few hundred yards of the Middle Lake, opposite the gate of Mr. Herbert's beautiful demesne of Muckross, in which is situated the old abbey formerly called Irrelagh, and which was founded by Donald, son of Thady M'Carthy, in 1440. To this abbey the resident of this hotel has access at all hours by special permission of Mr. Herbert; and its beauties must be seen by night as well as by day, to convey to the mind a true picture of its splendour. I visited it in my last ramble, by moonlight. I said, if Scott's idea of visiting Melrose be true, then will I try "Muckross aright;" and I assert that

"He who would view Muckross aright,

Must visit it by the pale moonlight."

I went next morning to see it with gorgeous sunlight; but the im

pression produced on my mind's-eye by the pale beams of the moon satisfied me that it is the chastened light only that makes Muckross "beautiful in gloom." The graveyard surrounds the abbey. In it are deposited the remains of the founders and their family. Even to this generation it is their favourite burial-place. In the midst of the dead spring up the transept and cloisters: the last are beautifully entire. You enter through a pointed doorway, the arch of which is deeply moulded; then through a narrow archway you approach the choir, in which are the tombs of M'Carthy More, O'Donohue of the Glen, and several other Irish chieftains, who, unruly enough in their day, now rest "tamed down to earth," with the wild blue violet springing from their resting-place. In the centre of the cloisters a yew tree, several hundred years old, springs to a great height; its branches completely roofing the centre of the transept. These picturesque and interesting ruins are worthy a visit, even were there not the thousand other beauties around that bid for admiration to the lover of antiquity.

Another advantage I found in stopping at Muckross Hotel was its proximity to Turk Waterfall. Here you can choose your day for visiting it. After a night's heavy rain it is grand. At all times fine, it is then sublime. The waters rushing in perfect foam from the centre of the mountain, leap into the wild glen below. The fall is not a quarter of an hour's walk from the hotel.

To a stranger, a recommendation from one who has been before them must be useful; I therefore append the charges to which I was subjected in my last visit :

Boats (two-oared), 5s. per day; and so in proportion, according to the number of men employed; the six-oared boat being 15s.. No fees are allowed to be charged by the boatmen, which was an old grievance, and is very properly done away with. An outside jaunting car, with one horse, is charged at the rate of sixpence per mile; and for a pony to ride to the Devil's Punchbowl, four shillings per day. There is no charge for a boat used for angling. This to me was another very great inducement, being as fond of fish as a cat ; and now, in my old age, being as loath to wet my feet as the aforesaid feline

animal.

The hotel is neat and comfortable, the viands and eatables of the first order for the inward man. The head waiter, Jerry, is most civil, sober (rare in an Irish waiter), and obliging-not too loquacious for the silent visitor, nor too silent for the inquiring visitor. He comes of a rare pugnacious family, althongh he is as quiet as a lamb. Jerry's father was a comfortable farmer, who resided near Youghal, and occupied, between mountain and inland, nearly five hundred acres ; yet, with all the opportunities that Dame Fortune so often presents to the enterprising man, old Dhermod never could call fourpence his own; and although he could boast that Poverty always kept a day's march behind him, yet he could not help complaining that it was still treading