at his very best. Let the reader throw aside this volume and turn to these "Histories." He has an hour of sheer joy before him.

And then, perhaps, he will welcome a breathingspell; indeed it might be just as well to get out into the open after the atmosphere of this stuffy library for so many hours. Let us change, and get on the back of a horse or, better still, let us join Mr. Frank Raby, a great friend of mine, and with him go up to London.

XI

SPORTING-BOOKS

WE could have waited for the coach, but with Mr. Raby it's "damn the expense," so we traveled in his post chaise very comfortably up to London at the rate of about ten miles per hour, including stops. Upon our arrival in the metropolis we descended at Stevens's Hotel in Bond Street, and after the removal of the stains of travel from our persons, and dressing with the care which life in town demands, we sauntered forth, and in the course of our wanderings were surprised to stumble upon "Ackermann's Eclipse Sporting Gallery" in Regent Street; upon our last visit to town that gentleman's enterprise was known as the "Repository" and it was located in the Strand. Upon inquiry we were informed that the elder Ackermann was dead; he had suffered a stroke of paralysis, after which time the control of his affairs had passed largely into the hands of his son of the same name. Almost immediately the Repository became the Eclipse Sporting Gallery, and abandoning its old location in the Strand, it moved to a more fashionable situation in the west end of town.

The change in the name suggests the change in character of the business; henceforth "sport" rather than "art" was to reign. Italy for ruins, Germany for music, France for art, but in all that pertains to

sport, to games, to life in the open, England is the land! We hear, or used to hear, of the pleasure-loving French, but the Frenchmen's idea of recreation is to grow hair curiously in little tufts upon their faces, and then to sit at little round tables outside the cafés and make eyes at the women as they pass; this is the one outdoor sport in which they excel. They race horses, no doubt, and are adept at cards, but it is pathetic to see them with a bat or ball or gun. Of the manly art of self-defense they know nothing; they can, however, give you a kick that will take the joy out of life for an indefinite period. On the other hand, the English, men and women, old and young, love games, especially such games as take them out of doors. To be supremely happy the man should be mounted upon a good horse, but if he cannot afford this, he can make shift with a stout stick and a dog to keep him company.

The Englishmen are the sportsmen par excellence of the world, and for their sports they dress themselves with care: tight-fitting garments for one occasion, loose ones for another; "pink" for one sport, plaid for another; the style is the man, and for style the whole world looks to the one place where it can be found. I feel quite sure that a New York tailor will turn you out infinitely better than an English tailor, but the New York tailor gets his styles and his cloths from London. Where else should he get them? From Berlin? The Germans are the worstdressed people in the world. Tell a German that he

looks like an Englishman, and he may affect to be insulted but secretly he is enormously pleased. From Paris? For madame Paris will do very well, but Frenchmen dress like freaks unless they copy the Englishman. I once so far forgot myself as to buy an expensive hat on the Rue de la Paix, and I was a marked man until I got rid of it.

The English are very complacent about all this: indeed nothing less than a world war can shake them out of their complacency. Even that German lunatic, George III, before whom they bent the knee, who by his pig-headedness lost them America, did not greatly suffer in their esteem. Our loss was greater than theirs, they said, for we had lost them, whereas they had only lost us. And "Farmer George" was all right. Had he not overthrown Napoleon? And what of India?

Never again will England be so completely cock of the world's walk as in the fifty years after the Battle of Waterloo. England then was indeed the right little, tight little island to which all the world had paid and would continue to pay tribute. The rich were very rich, and the poor were very poor, but was that not as God had ordained? The governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters" were satisfied, and that was all that was necessary. Oh! what a comfortable thing it was to hear the children promise to order themselves "lowly and reverently" to all their "betters," and to hear them sing:

"God bless the squire and his relations,

And keep us in our proper stations."

The poor were expected by Church and State to work for pay just sufficient to keep body and soul together, just as the squire was expected to ride and drive and hunt and shoot from one year's end to another. And they gave parties, they did, in those days when George the Fourth was King. Ladies upon these occasions do not seem to have been much in evidence; their place was in the "bower." The parties were, in fact, drinking-bouts, and we read of one at which a butler was so indefatigable with his corkscrew, and it grew so hot under the friction to which it was subjected, that it actually set fire to the cork, the bottle of spirits exploded, and the whole establishment went up in flames.

And this life, so picturesque and so completely a thing of the past, is nowhere so perfectly described as in the "sporting-books" which we are now to consider. We shall only skim the cream of this subject, for it is a study by itself.

Alphabetically and otherwise it is convenient to begin with Alken. One comes so frequently upon the phrase "with plates by Alken" in catalogues and in conversation about sporting-books and prints, that it is somewhat disconcerting to discover that there were several Alkens. Very little is really known about Henry Alken, whose work is in such demand to-day. George H. Sargent, in that excellent Boston paper, the Transcript, some years ago published a check list of the works of this great master, and pointed out that the statement of the Dictionary of National