perience and enriches craft and vice." Such are the words of a worldwon wisdom

"The sober zeal

Of age, commenting on prodigious things."

They serve as I hope not unpropitiously-to point the purpose that I have in hand. It will be a source of no small satisfaction should your approval wait upon the treatment of the task, when

you.

"My bane and antidote are both before"

(To be continued.)

THE PASSIONS OF THE HORSE.

PLATE I.-AFFECTION.

ENGRAVED BY E. HACKER, FROM A PAINTING BY J. F. HERRING, SEN.

We have this month the pleasure of introducing the first of a series of plates after designs by the elder Herring. We think it will be allowed that no man has put in stronger claims for such a duty as illustrating the passions of the horse; and we believe further it will be found that his realization of them will rank worthily enough with his previous works.

The calm pleasures of domestic life afford perhaps but limited scope for either pen or pencil. In selecting the mare with her foal, however, as his embodiment of the horse's" affection," Mr. Herring has once more evinced his intimate knowledge of the animal. The horse likes company-the one that stands in the stall beside him-the groom that tends him-the master who uses him-down even to the cat that dozes on his back. But in no case is the power of affection so strongly developed as with a mare and her foal. It is indeed a mother's love. Only mark the anxiety of her which misses the young one from her side her utter disquietude, and the eagerness with which she seeks for him. And, then, when the wayward one chooses to return, see how soon she is comforted-how she fondles over him-and shows in every look and movement that AFFECTION which we number as the first of our set.

Let the print here speak for itself.

It would be but poor policy to anticipate the succeeding scenes in the series. Still they will naturally become more exciting as we proceed, and trace the many other passions of the horse as drawn out in the emulation of the course, the joys of the chase, or the less distinguished duties of hack life.

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LETTERS FROM MY UNCLE SCRIBBLE.

MY DEAR NEPHEW,—

We may be said to have reached the half-way house of the hunting season at last. The oldest inhabitant-who is, from his very infirmities, the biggest fool-prognosticated at last no frost at all. The weather has put to the rout all the amateur Murphys and Moores, with a vengeance. Week after week the constant cry has been-" We must have it! after all this downfall, it will come at last! until, finding these atmospheric prophecies failing to come off at the right time, the seers changed their tack, and swore it wouldn't come at all. But it has come. The fox-hunter's twelfth-cake has not been forgotten; and though he must swallow it, perhaps his horses may be said, with more justice, to enjoy it.

Three or

What a selfish set of fellows you young fox-hunters are! four open winters successively, and now November, December, and January, without a day's intermission, have not satisfied you. On the contrary, with what indignation you dig your boot-heels into the snow, and poke holes with your walking-stick underneath the hedges, in the vain hope that the frost is giving! It is giving-your horses and hounds a chance to recover from a very distressing season. And even now, before many days, the probability is that you will be again in the saddle: I do not mean under the circumstances of the gallant Scythians, who, when the ice hems in their keels,

"Nec pervia velis Equora frangit eques,"

takes his canter over the slippery champaign, but under the same happy circumstances as before; only more muddy, more deep, more holding, more scent-carrying, and more distressing. Picture to yourself the week's or fortnight's snow evaporating before the genial sun of February's sky, or, as more likely, sinking into the lap of earth under the influence of a muggy rain, and tell us what you think of a leggy one in a fallow field. What will become of the cheap and nasty, of the fleshy and under-bred, or of the sixteen-stone gentlemen who exhibit so honourably when the dust begins to fly? Where will they all be when the frost goes? Echo answers, Nowhere!

But, after all, my dear boy, there are other persons besides yourself to be considered in the dispensations of atmosphere. If the clerk of the weather occasionally shuts up shop, or Jupiter Pluvius succumbs to Jupiter Frigidus (do not laugh; quite Horatian, I assure you: "sub Jove frigido," you remember), instead of grumbling, try to turn your attention to some equally improving occupation with hunting. You cannot expect all the prizes in the weather-office lottery.

As I have not a great deal to record this month on your favourite pursuit, just look at the other members of your society. All those fellows have got tickets; but, if you are to have always prizes, a great many of them must draw blanks.

Here's a fellow! Look at his face he's as jolly as if he had had a legacy left him. He's been out to look at the weather, and, to his delight, he finds it snowing and freezing, as if it had only just turned the corner of Christmas-day. Now, what do you imagine he's thinking of? Why, just about the time you are dressing for dinner, poking up your bedroom fire, and wondering whether Noakes has broken his neck on the road, that youth will be putting on a pea-jacket and thick boots, to wait, with a fervid imagination and a doubtful firelock, for a flight of wild-ducks or teal, at the sheltered end of a half-frozen piece of water. His teeth will chatter, his fingers will ache, his nose will run (and he daren't blow it, for the life of him); but, as long as he gets one shot into the flight, one good rattler into the breast of his quarry, he cares nothing about teeth, fingers, or nose. For a successful shot, he is just of an age to give up the last-mentioned member altogether. That's a schoolboy he has no horses, or he would probably be just as hard upon the frost as the frost is upon the ground; but he has borrowed a tenant's musket, and for six long weeks of vacation or more he has been mentally praying for what he has got. You know nothing of his pleasure; for, though you are not much older, I firmly believe you forget every trait of boyhood with your Latin and Greek. The rising generation is so very precocious, that it gets empty-hearted almost as soon as it becomes empty-headed. What does he want with more mud and rain? Poor little beggar!" let him enjoy a fortnight's frost and snow. Freezing, to speak philosophically, is the solidification of fluid bodies by the abstraction of heat necessary to their fluid form. To speak plainly, in the absence of sufficient heat, water becomes ice. And when water has become ice, a strong temptation is held out to men that live in cities, and have regard to the ways and appliances of cities

"Prætexta, et trabeæ, fasces, lectica, tribunal”—

to men who love the wig and ermine, the treasury bench, the threelegged stool and desk-to go out skating. What, in the name of Fortune, do these men want with heavy rains or drizzling falls? They like their falls on the ice; you like yours in a fallow. Is a man not to have a red nose, or a cracked skull, only because he does not go out hunting? only because he has no time or no money? Juvenal says

"Lucri bonus est odor ex re Quâlibet ;"

And if a man must make his fortune in London, so much the worse for him--the more claim he has upon our forbearance when he gets his spin "over the flat."

66

Perhaps you don't skate? Very likely not. You may be fat, or graceless, or pravis fultus malè talis ;" but surely it must be some fun to you, even, to see that red-nosed man making his way, at all hazards, from one end of the Serpentine to the other! The redness of his nose is not that of cold and poverty; no, it is full of intense enjoyment. See how he goes plump into that graceful old gentleman in the brown wig and hessians, who is cutting some unearthly figure with his back turned to everybody! Both down, and up again and at work directly! Bravo, Rednose! that's only a little boy; run him down. Just then there comes a sort of crack, ominous of something, and in goes our friend, neck and crop. The scene closes with a Humane Society man, a rope,