COVER YOUR BIRD.
SPORTING Senators are not, it is to be feared, exactly the class of men to find "sermons in stones," otherwise there are good morals for them to be found in shooting ; and the broken weather they have had at the moors this year has afforded leisure to meditate on them. For example—
A raw sportsman will blaze away among a covey of birds, and exult in the number he brings down as helping to make out his tale at evening. A true high-bred sportsman covers his bird, and accounts it a blot on his scutcheon if more than that one fall. Bringing down the one is a feat of marksmanship—hitting the bull's eye in the centre ; bringing down more is riddling the rim of the target with scattering shot. Benevolence finds its account in this respectable vanity—this artistical pride of the sportsman. By marking his bird, and of course firing only within range, he kills at once, and does not fill the covey with maimed birds. This may be called the point of honour, the chivalry of birding—it enlists the self-satisfaction of conscious adroitness in the service of mercy.
Now in Parliament our orators are but too apt to deal out wounds, with those ultra-Warner projectiles the ma wrepoevra, among the covey "on the opposite bench," without covering their bird, or being very anxious to make sure that it is within range. They blaze away without being certain of bringing down their bird, or even a brace of them, merely to "flutter their Volscians," and send them home smarting, galled with chance-wounds. They excite anger without attaining any useful end. If the Parliamentary orator could be inoculated with the artistical feeling of the dead shot on the heather or among the stubble,—if Lord STANLEY or Mr. SHEIL could be taught to be ashamed of themselves when they raised " counter-cheers " of soreness and irritation, esteeming them a proof that they had only mangled the pack instead of covering their bird,—the decorum of the Senate would be much amended ; and though the love of giving pain, which prompts the oratorical
sarcasm, might still prevail, its mischievous effects would be di- minished.
This moral from the moors, though here applied to public life, may not be without use in private society ; for even there may bunglers at sarcasm be found, who are not ashamed to fire at random into a close-packed covey.
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