The just, virtuous man is alone truly happy. He bears indestructible tranquillity of mind in himself, and lives in peace with himself and the world. He is independent of outward vicissitudes. Fickle fortune cannot rob him of his happiness of soul. His virtues win for him the joys of friendship, and, even if friends desert him, an approving conscience gives him comfort, and God and good angels are with him. Yet he ought not to seek virtue merely for the pleasure that will follow it. . . From him who grasps greedily at the reward of virtue, it will disappear; he destroys the costly prize, like the child who puts into his mouth as food the rose, which is so lovely to the eye, or like the rude boy who breaks with awkward hands the sweet-toned instrument of music. All this is as remote from Tom Paine as it is from Jeremy Bentham. In fact, we can overhear one section of well-to-do "Christians" stigmatising it as over-refined and transcendental. In his exposition of the law of self-sacrifice, Shelley out-Christianises Paley and Co. to a surprising extent. By the way, in one of these letters Shelley complains of his being made a "bad Christian" of; and how? By a cause which must ever be insisted upon as one pre-eminently influential on his inner life-namely, physical disease. Does the reader remember Hawthorne's strange and suggestive story of the "Bosom Serpent?" Well, Shelley had such a plague, but in no metaphorical incarnation. "I have been confined two days," he writes to Mr. Graham, in 1816, "with that serpent in my bosom-my old complaint. This often renders my life extremely miserable, and makes me a bad Christian too." With folds of that kind writhing about his heart, how could it beat freely? how could its action be other than irregular, abnormal, spasmodic? Let him that is without sin cast the first stone at this One frail form, a phantom amongst men, but let not him that is without disease. Let all think with love and sympathy of that lonely one, neglected and apart, A herd-abandon'd deer, pierced by the hunter's dart, and fleeing astray, with feeble steps, o'er the world's wilderness. Well did Alastor describe himself as a love masked in desolation, a power girt round by weakness. From so limited a series of letters we will not make further extracts, though tempted by some choice morceaux about Florence and Rome, and the life-enjoying spirit of Italy, which Shelley defends against the puritanic mind of the North, and which he believes to nerve for toil, and prevent the ravages of care, and lend graceful buoyancy to life, and reconcile man to his destiny-"the bright episode of a severe epic." There are interesting allusions, too, to Byron and his works, and to some of his own progressing compositions. Let every lover of Shelley, or of epistolary excellence, consult the volume itself. These few letters form fresh, however scanty, materials for a biography of the writer. And such a biography is a desideratum, now more than ever. A biographer is wanted who shall present Shelley in a guise that disfigures not the poet, nor offends and perplexes the reader. For confirmed Shelleyites Mr. Browning might do, had he the will. But antiShelleyites require an interpreter of may we say it?—a less sectarian The hour is come, but where is the man? caste. SPRING. AN INVOCATION. BY W. BRAILSFORD. Up in the hawthorn in the dale With voice all blithe and free; The torpid bee, with drooping wing, In orchard crofts and bowers; And yield him pleasant flowers. The violet half opes its eye, As if it feared some fate was nigh To end its early day; The primrose leaves the mossy beds, The snow-flakes melt, the ice is gone, Only the winds in forest trees Awake sad echoes from the leas, And chill the growing mead. Only the winds, they seem to stay, Come, fairest Spring, come bid them cease, We call thee from those regions fair, Hark! hark! the notes of Time's old bells HUNTING IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA. SOUTH AUSTALIA is a colony that, up to the present time, has made but little noise in the world; and although we colonists think very highly of our fine province, and have also a tolerably favourable opinion of ourselves, yet we must sometimes reluctantly acknowledge that we are but in our infancy, and not fit to be trusted out of leading-strings. We rattle away in our little "go-cart" with as much fuss as if we were driving a "'buss," or conducting a railway-train, while our dear old mother-country watches us with a smile, and takes anxious care, that in our self-sufficiency we do not tumble down and break our bones. But if we are not yet fit to be breeched in John Bull's corduroys, if our legs cannot fill John's topboots, let us at least hope that we have honest John's sturdy disposition and some of his good qualities; and among them I think we may lay claim to the love of rural pursuits, and some of us are still attached to the old English sports of the field. Of course, among colonists generally, the grand and all-absorbing pursuit is the chase after £ s. d.; yet some are found who prefer the cover side to the counter, and who would rather draw a "gorse" than a "bill." I consider an introduction of this sort necessary to my account of "Hunting in South Australia," to save me from the imputation of conceit in my description of days with "the Adelaide," and also to impress on my English readers that I believe our colonial hounds do not yet rival the "Quorn." Having said thus much, I, in all modesty, enter on the subject of Australian hunting. Two descriptions of game afford sport for the chase in South Australia, viz., the native dog (an animal resembling a jackall) and the kangaroo. There is another kind hunted by foxhounds here, but this I tell as a great secret, not to be mentioned at Melton-it is the emu. The native dog runs much like a fox; he is, perhaps, not quite so fast, but he smells quite as nasty, and has great powers of endurance, combined with much cunning. He is found everywhere, anywhere, and nowhere, for he has baffled us all in our inquiries into his habits. It is always a problem where he is to be met with sometimes he is in a swamp, at others on the ranges, and when it suits his humour he pads along the highway. His tastes vary so much that it is a toss-up at any time you go out whether it will be "a find" or "a blank." In figure, the native dog is larger than the fox, stands higher on his legs in proportion, is stouter-limbed, wants the very sharp nose, small prick ears, and wide whiskers; and, in short, is a very much clumsier animal. In colour he is generally a reddish, or rather, yellowish brown, though some are met with quite black, and some black and white. He has a fine bushy tail tipped with white, which he carries over his back when marauding or taking his pleasure, but which he puts between his legs when running away from hounds. He has a very tough hide, and takes "a deal of worrying before he gives up the ghost. He often counterfeits death, and will get up after being very roughly handled, and slink away. He has an Etonian appetite for mutton, and, in consequence, is the settler's bugbear." The kangaroo is, in my opinion, the Australian stag-rampant; and although he only runs on his two hind legs, yet he can go "the pace." His clumsy tail has long been considered of service to him in assisting him to spring in his long jumps, but this is an error; it may assist him in progression, by keeping the balance of his position, but when the animal is running it never touches the ground. It assists him to stand erect, and when on the defensive, he balances himself on it, and strikes out with both his hind legs at the same time. This is not generally known, and may therefore be doubted, but I have seen it frequently done, and a dangerous opponent he is, often ripping up dogs at a single blow. He is always found in scrubby country, and is classed, according to his age, as the "old man," the "forester," and the "flying buck;" of course I confine myself to the male sex, for no sportsman would hunt an "old woman" if he could help it. In truth, old women are at a discount all over the world. The "flying buck" is the fastest of the three, but, in consequence of its artlessness or inexperience, it is less up to the dodges of the "old man" or "forester;" and as the innocent are always victimised, it becomes a certain prey to the hounds. The emu I really feel somewhat ashamed, as an Englishman and a sportsman, to speak about hunting: a bird, a thing with claws and feathers and a beak! It sounds badly in the description of a day's sport to say, that after a run of fifty-five minutes, without a check, the hounds ran gallantly into a bird! and that Mr. Such-a-one got the tail feathers. In England, people shoot birds, or keep them in cages; and I think I may say that no one, even with the most vivid imagination, ever contemplated tally-hoing a bird out of cover. Such things might possibly have happened had Mr. What's-his-name's flying-machine come into general use; but on this dull earth, with its round of every-day incidents, such things were never dreamt of. As, however, I am writing from the antipodes, some consideration must be allowed me, and when I say that emus have been hunted, and have afforded excellent runs, I must not be set down as a drawer of the long-bow, or as a romancer, or as anything but a lover of truth. It must be borne in mind, that many strange things occur at this end of the world, where we are all turned topsy-turvy. Before entering further on my subject, I ought to state that the legitimate chase in Australia has been for years pursued with dogs of a breed between the greyhound and some larger dog, producing a kind of lurcher, and afterwards much improved; they are now called "kangaroo dogs." The large, rough Scotch staghound has also been introduced here, and has been used in the pursuit of the kangaroo. With fast dogs of this kind, that bring their game to bay before it is tired out, and when it has its strength unimpaired, to act on the defensive, it is requisite they should be possessed of power and courage, to attack and overcome their quarry. Hunting the kangaroo with these dogs was but a very tame sort of sport, requiring little skill or judgment; a quick eye, a tolerable seat on horseback, and a firm belief in the impossibility of a man's knocking his brains out against a tree, was all that one required. Any knowledge of country, of the mystery of making a cast, or of helping hounds in difficulty, or, in fact, in anything relating to the science of hunting, was quite superfluous; for in most runs of this sort the dogs and game got clean away, throwing out the horsemen after a few minutes' "spurt.' Nothing, when this occurred, was to be done but to wait until a dog March.-VOL. XCIV. NO. CCCLXXV. 2 B came back, all covered with blood, and perhaps wounded; and then, if he Sometimes it has happened that an “old man,’ or a "boomer," stood at bay in a water-hole (for they will take to "soil," like a stag), and the horsemen, hearing the barking of their dogs, have arrived in time to kill him; this has caused a little excitement, because the kangaroo will attack a man, and give him a friendly hug, or tear his stomach open with the sharp toe of his hind leg. Once upon a time, native dogs and emus were hunted in this way. The emus gave the best sport, because they were commonly found on the plains, and then it somewhat resembled coursing; but coursing I never could enjoy: to see two dogs running after a poor little innocent hare, to watch her exertions to save her life, until one quite enters into poor puss's distress, and then to see her chucked up in the air, and caught in the mouth of the victorious greyhound, always seemed to me cruel work. I am tender-hearted naturally, and must be spurred on to cruelty by the "tally-ho"-by the "burst"-by the excitement of the gallop-by the sight of a numerous body of men, seriously bent on breaking their necks, riding at everything before them--before I can enjoy the luxury of seeing any innocent, helpless animal torn to pieces by a pack of hounds; and, therefore, I dislike coursing, because the hare is killed before one has time to get brutal enough to wish for her death. At the same time I must confess that I am not insensible to the merits of jugged hare, hare soup, or a hunted hare, roasted, and served up with sweet sauce; but then I should like my hare to be tenderly killed-mercifully hunted. But all this is digression, and so I will now give an account of a day with the Adelaide hounds. One bright morning in the month of June, about the year 1843, at ten o'clock, A.M., a body of horsemen, bent upon having a gallop with the Adelaide hounds, assembled on the outskirts of a scrub about nine miles north-east of Adelaide. The hounds had arrived before them, and were being uncoupled; the surrounding scenery was extremely wild, and as unlike a cover side in England as could well be imagined. A thick scrub, formed of a variety of shrubs, extended to the foot of some steep and moderately lofty ranges, which were covered with forest timber. These shut in the view to the eastward and northward; to the southward and westward openly-timbered forest land, in picturesque undulations, reached the sea-coast; bright-coloured parrots and parroquets were screaming in the gum-trees, or flying about in flocks, their gaudy plumage glancing beautifully in the sunshine. The magpie was making the 1 |