from Rubens and Snyders down to Bonheur and Vernet. That his unsold
pictures have brought, since his death, something like half a million
proves nothing. Time was when the worthless canvases of West and
Morland were equally transmutable into gold.

Like other forms of British field-sports, deer-stalking is
sufficiently intricate and artificial. It is obviously the occupation
of men whose primary object is more to kill time than to kill deer.
According to print, from type and plate, the stag, a reduced edition
of the American wapiti, is, in the heart of a little kingdom of some
hundreds of souls to the square mile, as little accustomed to the
sight of man and as hard to approach as he would be on the head-waters
of the Yellowstone. If five or six hours' worming, _ventre à terre_,
up the bed of a mountain-torrent, with not even a rowan-bush to aid
concealment, succeed in bringing the sports-man within two hundred
yards of his unconscious game, it is a good day's performance. How,
the dun deer's hide once perforated, the "tail" of game-keepers,
beaters and volunteer hangers-on is gathered up, the comforting
toothfu' of usquebaugh absorbed by the toilers of the brae, the victim
"gralloched" and suspended across the inevitable gray Highland pony
that makes such a capital "first light" for the foreground, and the
line of triumphant march taken up for hunting-box, clachan or castle,
have we not been told to repletion? The tool used on these occasions
is up to the latest requirements of modern science. Whitworth and
Lancaster, thanks to their projectile's being wedged in so tight as
to cause an occasional misunderstanding it and the breech-plug as to
which was expected to move, have grown unpopular. The style and the
patentee vary every year or two or oftener, breech-loading and the
elongated bullet being the only persistent features.