counties that to kill a quail is an event which to many sportsmen of this generation has never occurred. A century ago this was not the case. The old sportsman, of whom a story as to game certificates is related above (p. 34), was accustomed to tell how when a boy he had been in the habit of helping a cunning Essex gamekeeper to catch quails. On one occasion, a stranger from a distance, surprised at the sport he had enjoyed among the Essex quails, wished to obtain a supply for his own preserves. The gamekeeper readily undertook the task, which he performed much to his employer's satisfaction. As, however, the method he adopted was the use of a call imitating the cry of the hen-quail,* he caught nothing but cocks, so that the year after a great disappointment ensued; such of these bachelors or widowers as had not wandered, naturally were without families, and the race of quails in their new settlement shewed no signs of extension. At present all the gamekeepers in East Anglia might call quails from the 15th March to the 1st August, and, we venture to say, not catch a dozen.

Our reference to the Act for the Protection of Wild Birds has drawn us away from 'Rural Sports.' We might follow out our text by some notice of Daniel's observation as to guns, in the construction of which the revolutions have been as great and almost as frequent as those of a neighbouring country. In Daniel's time a percussion cap had never yet exploded; he relates with exultation that Mr. Joseph Manton has produced a hammer which completely prevents guns from hanging fire.' We have heard of a gun in our youth the trigger of which.. was so stiff that it was necessary to begin pulling directly the birds rose; but now-a-days a 'hang-fire' is almost unheard of. Hear, again, as to fowling-pieces :

The fowling-piece should not be fired more than twenty times without being washed. The flint, pan, and hammer, should be well wiped after each fire, and a feather introduced into the touchhole. ... Flints should never be worn close, or even attempted to be fired any great number of times.'

Conceive the feelings of a line of impatient shooters sweeping over a turnip-field with double-barrelled breech-loaders, and forced to wait while the ghost of the Rev. W. B. Daniel, in a green coat with high collar and gaitered up to his middle, deliberately wipes the ghost of a single gun,† introduces a feather

into

The Sportsman's Dictionary' gives an elaborate description (and an engraving) of both male and female quail-calls, but probably the latter is the more efficacious.

+ The Sportsman's Dictionary,' 8. v. FOWLING PIECE, observes, That piece is always reckoned the best which has the longest barrel,' and goes on to observe

that

into its touch-hole, and changes his flint. Mr. Daniel goes

on:

In the reign of Charles I., no person shot flying. What is now termed poaching was the gentleman's recreation; and so late as within sixty years, an individual who exercised the art of shooting birds on the wing was considered as performing something extraordinary, . . . since that period the practice has been more common, and is at present almost universal.'

Our readers will remember the sportsman pointing his gun through a hedge at partridges in Rubens's picture of his countryhouse, as illustrating the first of these statements. Shooting flying, of course, depended upon the skill of the locksmith. As soon as gun-locks went well, sportsmen would begin to improve in skill. Pope's line,

seems to shew that when he wrote the 'Essay on Man,' this development of the art of shooting was sufficiently matter of notice for him to use it in pointing the phrases of his verse.

There is one more change to remark in the customs of sports, -a change which has arisen chiefly in consequence of improvements in agriculture. Thirty or even twenty years ago the use of the scythe was partially, of the reaping-machine wholly, unknown. It is true that where clean farming prevailed, stubbles had ceased to be what they once were, a dwarf jungle; but they still afforded capital covert for partridges, and gave pointers and setters at once a chance and a use. Now-a-days, however, we may search parish after parish in all the best arable counties before we find a good old-fashioned stubble, and if one by any accident exists, no sooner are the gleaners out than the wheat-haulmers are in, and autumn culture destroys all the hopes of the sportsman. Under these circumstances, and particularly where French partridges abound, it has been found necessary to substitute the retriever for the pointer, and to put the birds into the turnips,' in place of seeking them in the stubbles. To this change yet another change has succeeded, applied both to partridges and to grouse. The system of driving has supplanted the system of walking up' the game, with very satisfactory results in many ways. First, it makes the sportsman much less dependent on weather; a result which also accompanies the use of the breech-loader. Next, it accomplishes with respect to grouse an object which that any gentleman who sports much ought to have two guns, 'the barrel of one about two feet nine inches, which will serve very well for the beginning of the season, and for wood-shooting, the other about three feet three inches, for shooting after Michaelmas.' Two feet four inches is now rather an extreme length for a gun-barrel.

could

could never be accomplished in any other way,-that of killing off the old birds, and especially the old cocks. Year by year, cock grouse enlarges the circle which he very properly regards as a sacred circle traced round the nest where his affections are centred. Year by year, therefore, there is his breeding and feeding-ground left for the younger birds. The older birds, being also the shyer and the more cunning, so long as the gun went to the game, were the less likely to be killed. Now, however, that the game comes, that is, is driven to the gun, the old bird stands a worse chance than the young one. We have heard that in some Yorkshire and Lancashire moors where, owing to the nature of the ground, grouse became unapproachable by dogs after the first two or three days' shooting, the increase in the number killed by driving has been three, four, and even fivefold, with a better stock of birds left for breeding than in the old days. Of course the wonderful nose and instinct of the setter or pointer is no longer of use, but the skill required by the sportsman is proportionably greater, and the distance passed over in walking from position to position often not less than it was in beating a moor after the old fashion.

We must now conclude. Without doing more than make a few timid suggestions as to changes in the Law of Game, we have endeavoured to supply our readers with some information as to the state of the law on that subject in foreign countries and in our own Colonies, which may enable them to draw their own conclusions as to what is best to be done; whether to alter the law of trespass, or to alter the law of property in game, or to extend the provisions of the Wild Birds Protection Act to other creatures, or to combine any or all of these measures, with or without the abolition of the present law. We have also taken the opportunity of pointing out in how many particulars the sport of the present day differs from that of the last generation, and, although we have not ourselves drawn that inference, it may not be unfair to presume that where so many changes have taken place in customs, some might be expected to take place in law.

The question appears to assume day by day a more commercial aspect. Game, once forbidden to be sold, is now saleable. Manors, once valueless, are now of great and increasing value. The guardians of property, once forbidden to interfere in game matters, now act as auxiliary gamekeepers, with results, as it would appear, not productive of inconvenience or waste of public or local funds. Why can we not take two more steps,— provide for the efficient rating of land in respect of the value of the game or the game rent, and let game, and, for the matter of that, all the living creatures on the land become legally and actually the property of the occupier?

ᎪᎡᎢ.

ART. III.-1. Geschichte der Hohenstaufen. Von Friedrich von Raumer. Neue Ausgabe. 6 Bände. 1872.

2. Euvres de Frédéric le Grand, Roi de Prusse. Publiés par ordre du Roi régnant. 30 vols. 1846-57.

THE

HE two ablest sovereigns that ever bore sway in Germany have both by a strange chance-we must not call it singular-borne the title of Frederick the Second. Of these, the one was Emperor of the Romans; the other, King of Prussia. An interval of five centuries lies between them, marked by the greatest changes in language and in manners, in religion and in modes of thought. Yet still both the characters and times. of these two monarchs afford some points of parallel which, as we venture to think, it may not be without interest to trace. Let us then endeavour to compare them in several transactions, and at divers periods of their lives.

Let us first take their early years.

Frederick, the future Emperor, was born on the day after Christmas, in the year 1194, and in the district of Ancona. At present

'Jesi is an interesting little town of some 5000 inhabitants, tracing its origin to an indefinite number of centuries before the foundation of Rome, and famed in the middle ages as the birthplace of Frederick the Second, the great Emperor of Germany, whose constant wars with the Roman Pontiffs, and encouragement of literature, render his memory very popular amongst Italian writers. A thriving trade in silk has preserved it from the squalid misery discernible in most of the inland towns of the March, and it can boast of some palaces in tolerable preservation, a casino, a very pretty theatre, and several churches.'

So writes of it Mrs. Gretton, the authoress of two very well informed and very entertaining volumes on Italy, which were published so far back as 1860, and which we are glad to have an opportunity of mentioning, as we do not think that at the time they attracted as much notice as their merit deserved.

In the fourth year of his life Frederick lost his father; in the fifth, his mother. The infant prince was proclaimed King of Sicily, and crowned in great state at Palermo. There it was that he grew up to manhood. Taught in part by Saracen instructors, he quickly mastered all the learning which could be acquired in that dark age. He was versed in poetry and music; he could speak, it is said, not only Greek and Latin, not only Italian and German, but also French and Arabic. In the year 1209 he was married to Constance, daughter of Alfonso,

King of Aragon; and at the beginning of 1212, Frederick, then only seventeen, was suddenly called upon to assume the most momentous responsibilities of public life. An opening appeared in Germany, which seemed to promise him the Crown, worn with so much of glory by his ancestors of the House of Hohenstaufen.

Otho of Brunswick was at this time Emperor. He had dissatisfied the clergy; he was excommunicated by the Pope. Several of the princes and prelates of Germany rose against him. An embassy of two brave Suabian knights was sent by them to Palermo, inviting the young heir of Hohenstaufen to become their chief and do battle in their cause. Well might the boy-king hesitate. It was a perilous adventure of most uncertain issue. His Sicilian counsellors almost with one voice declared that he would hazard his life to no purpose, and urged him to refuse. His young wife, with her new-born son in her arms, tenderly besought his stay. But the martial spirit of his race roused within him. He resolved to shew himself the worthy grandson of the first Frederick, the renowned Barbarossa'-to grasp at the prize or to perish in the endeavour.

6

was

On Palm Sunday, in the year 1212, the young King embarked at Palermo with a scanty train. He first repaired to Rome, where he sought to confirm the doubtful adherence of the Pope. Thence again embarking, he landed at Genoa, and found a firm friend in its republic. But the hostility of the Duke of Savoy on the one side, and of the citizens of Milan on the other, threatened to bar his passage to the Alps. When at last he did set forth, he hoped by a night-march to elude the vigilance of his pursuers. Scarce, however, had he crossed the river Lambro than he beheld the men of the escort who had brought him from Pavia, and who had made halt on the right bank, assailed and overpowered by a superior force from Milan without his being able to afford them any aid. Some seventy were taken prisoners; all the rest were put to the sword.

Escaped from this imminent danger, and with but few attendants, the young King turned aside from the better known and better guarded passes of the Alps, and climbed the rugged chain-in those days deemed well-nigh impassable-which parts the Engadine from Italy. He passed those steep and solitary heights (as they then appeared to him), where now the brightcoloured houses of Campfer and St. Moritz, thronged every summer with English tourists, look gaily on the snow-peak of Surlei and the lakes of Silva Plana. Thence descending, either by the Julier Pass or along the Albula stream, he came down to the valley of the Rhine at Chur. In Switzerland he found some powerful