MR. GORDON CUMMING'S ILLUSTRATED LECTURE.
The modern Orion is one of the remarkable men of our day ; a man so possessed with the spirit of the chase that he leaves his country, his kin- dred and his father's house, his profession and his prospects of promotion, to hunt savage beasts for the mere love of the thing. His museum, for a long time exhibited at Knightsbridge, is now removed to Piccadilly. As our readers are most of them aware this museum is composed of the skins of beasts, skulls and ivory tusks, horns and antlers, taken in hunt- ing by the collector daring five years' wandering in SoutherreAfrica, and other huntinge in Europe, Asia, and America It is undoubtedly the most extraordinary collection of trophies ever made by one man. The history of the pursuit and capture of large game (for it is against the ra- venous and deadly fine naturre that Mr. Cumming makes war) is given in detail in the two volumes he published some years ago. He has now worked up certain portions of that book into a lively and very effective lecture, which is improved and illustrated by a series of scenic pictures designed by such men as Leech, Haghe, Harrison Weir, Sre. Once or twice in the course of his lecture, Mr. Cumming showed an anxiety to free himself from the charge of cruelty and love of slaughter, which was brought against him at the time of the publication of his book. It it quite clear that the collector of such a museum could not have been cast in the gentlest form of humanity. To be born a mighty hunter, is to be born destructive—that is clear. Mr. Cumming could not be tender-hearted to the lions and tigers, elephants and rhino- ceroses, he met with in his walks abroad. One shrinks at first from the idea of the enormous amount of wild animal life he destroyed for his amusement. It looks like wanton cruelty; but, on reflection, it turns out to be no more cruel than the "autumnal recreations of every English gentleman who can use a gun and his own time. Moreover, Mr. Cum- ming shows that his sports were the means of life to scores of native savages who followed him for the food he killed for them.
The lecture, which was privately delivered on Thursday night, was a successful experiment. It is clever enough, instructive enough, un- learned and amusing enough, to charm large numbers of cultivated idle people, and as many uncultivated working people as can get to hear it. A little reduction here and there would improve it ; but the bold, easy,
colloquial, unpretending tone of the whole, cannot be improved—it just suits the subject. If iwe might hint a fault, it would be concerning the style of the musical performance which accompanied the pictures. The tunes selected, whether Scotch or German, should not be "melancholy slow."
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