The small-talk of Holly Lodge suddenly ceased, not at all to my friend's regret, and looking up from his Mesopotamian narrative, he observed the astronomer and the ex-Governor-General join the throng on the other side of his chair with evident curiosity, and were soon lost to view. The new member was now left to the uninterrupted exercise of his listening faculties, but notwithstanding all his attention, he could hear nothing. A human voice was certainly audible, but not a sentence it uttered was distinct.

He was about surrendering his insecure hold upon Mr. Silk Buckingham, when a laugh broke simultaneously from the throng near him, and the circle gave evidence of a break-up. As he sprung on his legs he was hailed familiarly by an old friend, then holding a high post in the Government, who seemed in the greatest possible good humour.

"That's the drollest story, Mountnorris has just finished, I have heard a long time," exclaimed the

statesman.

"Droll," repeated the new member, looking a little mystified. "Oh, ah! an adventure among some of the negro tribes, perhaps."

"Nothing of the sort," was the reply. "His lordship knows better than to repeat such things here-bringing coals to Newcastle, you know. It was a sort of Irish fairy tale, very funny, about an Irishman paying a visit to the man in the moon on the back of an eagle. A capital story; you ought to have heard it."

He went his way laughing, and in a very few

minutes my friend also went his way, but in a much more serious frame of mind. A pleasant illusion had been destroyed. He could not readily reconcile himself to such mere talk, when he had expected to be so prodigiously enlightened.

I do not see why

In this I think he was wrong. great men who have seen the world, should not be permitted to associate with each other on an easy and familiar footing. The mathematician is not expected to talk problems-a judge who should be always summing up would not be tolerated anywhere-the traveller, therefore, at his club, ought to be allowed to be as social and amusable as the less adventurous portion of the community.

But a great change has been effected in the club since my friend's election. The race of amateur tourists has certainly greatly increased, but their multiplicity has made it necessary that they should do something more than journey from place to place, to obtain any distinction as travellers. Murray supplies them with information for any and every tour, but a man now who desires consideration for his foreign experience must go where the little red book cannot guide him, and must be furnished with intellectual resources far above the average in scientific knowledge which the preceding generation ever thought of. Above all, he ought to be familiar with the more important branches of natural history. contributions to this interesting department of science, the narratives of the mountain-climbers and the lion-killers have a special value rarely to be found in

As

SIR RODERICK MURCHISON.

313

the works of the more pretentious geographer or ethnologist. That is, they would have, if they were always true.

Indeed, I think we have been overdosed with African travel. Notwithstanding all that has been written by Dr. Barth, by Captains Burton and Speke, by Dr. Livingstone, and by scores of other explorers, the unsophisticated native African remains among the most brutalised of human beings. It is impossible to invest him with the false interest which M. du Chaillu contrived, for a time, to fling over his first cousin, the Gorilla.

I never was ambitious of admission into the Travellers' Club; the books I have tried to read have deterred me from seeking a nearer acquaintance with their authors. Let me venture to hope that the source of the Nile may be left alone for a season; the ocean of ink it has directed into the circulating libraries ought surely to give it the name of the other great river belonging to the same quarter of the world. This is not the only evil; the monstrous black dose is made more nauseous by the wearisome elaboration of the mixture.

The great stumbling-block to the elucidation of truth is, that the instant a man returns to this country who has been in Africa, or any other distant land, my excellent friend Sir Roderick Murchison, and the mob of pretended geographers who follow him, on hearing that the returned traveller boasts of having discovered wonders, at once take him by the hand, call a public meeting, and without thinking, as the police think

of a tale when it is told to them, whether or not the accounts laid before them "will wash," they accept them, publicly speak of his statements as gospel, and then when some test comes which proves that all is "not gold that glitters," my excellent friend and his brother philosophers find that, having swallowed too much, it is wiser to digest it-if they can.

CHAPTER XIV.

VIVE LA CHASSE.

French ideas of sport-Kennels in France-The maimed houndA day in the French forest-Discordant hunting-hornsFrench shooting and hunting-Hounds in chase-A rencontre -Wild boar and sow-Noisy sport-An old blind wolf that devoured little girls-The Limier-Cunning of the wild boar and the sow-Hunting an old solitaire-English hound ripped by a boar-Rejoicing of French sportsmen at his deathDressing the wounded hound.

PERHAPS there is no country in the universe that has reached so high a point of civilisation as France. As she has now an Emperor, certainly, in my belief, the only ruler capable of keeping her excitable masses in order for their own good; yet with the Frenchman's love of excitement, I wonder that he does not arrive at greater proficiency in cultivating "le sport" than I found in France when I went to the "Château Sauvages."

In pursuing the sports of the field their customs are ridiculous; nevertheless their passion for the cry of hounds, and the splendour of their woodlands, is beyond belief.

Frenchmen think that a hound is equally ready for work with his belly full or empty, when lame or sound; so at night, after a hard day's hunting, the dogs are