THE FIRST OF SEPTEMBER.
YESTERDAY, with its unseasonable sultry heat, threw us back almost into the middle of July ; and Thursday rained, as it some- times will rain on such a day, as if to break a sportsman's heart; but Wednesday was a true eve of the great annual festival the First of September, and naturally set one to recall the feelings of other years. It is a sad blunder in town-bred men to think of becoming sports-
men. There is no great harm in their reading the Sporting Maga- zine: Manton's descriptions of a fox-chase are as pleasing and pro- fitable excitement as COOPER'S descriptions of a chase at sea. But for the Cockney, who has taste to appreciate the artistical merits of the author we have named, to betake himself to the fields in good earnest, is as great a mistake, and of exactly the same kind, as Don Quixote committed when he sallied forth to enact the knight- errant about whom he had read with such pleasure.
If there is a day deserving to be called happy, it is a fine First of September. The sun is bright and powerful, but tempered with a bracing air, like that which on the morning of last Wednesday succeeded the rain of the previous day. The sportsman, who has been unable to rest all night lest he should over-sleep himself, has heard in the gray dawn the crowing of the partridges, and started from his bed as if at a trumpet's call. There is beauty in the glossy crackling stubble-field, and beauty in the rich juicy green of the turnip-field ; there is beauty in the massive foliage of the trees, of which scarce a leaf has fallen or faded; there is beauty in the blue sky, and the high white clouds which drift across it. Through the sharp, clear air, the crack of the fowling-piece and the whistle of the sportsman to his dogs fall with unwonted distinctness on the ear. Over hedge, ditch, and paling, go the pointer and his master; you can scarce tell which is the prouder and gladder of the two. The shooting-bag grows plumper, and the strap strains across the breast ; but it is one of the burdens we are proud to bear—like virtue, its own reward. We are in for one more First of September— one of those days which we have really lived.
But, to enjoy all this, a man must have been trained to it from his youth : it is not a pleasure which every man can enjoy if it merely cross his way. Any one but a thoroughbred sportsman will be knocked up before the day is half over; during two-thirds of it, if he do not give in, he will be toiling on with a miserable affecta- tion of enjoyment, which every one sees through. Let him look for no sympathy : contempt and derision is all he will meet with. The delicate miss, who by the sweet smell of the hay and pastoral as sociations should be tempted to undertake a day's real work in the hay-field—the tailor, who, inspired by the braying of trumpets, the waving of feathers, and the flash of steel, should have been mad enough to venture his body in a tournament—are but types of the folly of a comfortable citizen donning the shooting-jacket and at- tempting to stride across lea and stubble from morn till dewy eve.
The citizen's place on such occasions is that of a looker-on. He may meet the sportsmen, by appointment, at mid-day, to partake in some shady spot of a comfortable luncheon. He may even, if the place of rendezvous is not very fur distant from the house, relieve them of a part of their load, and return with half- a-dozen brace of partridges or a hare dangling in his hand. He may squib the guns of his sporting friends for them when they return at evening; or, if particularly aspiring, he may take a shot at a hat, or a horse-chesnut, or a turnip tossed into the air. But more than this it would be unwise for him to attempt. As he would escape chafed and galled limbs, and tossing and starting all night in a succession of feverish dozes, let him eschew the attempt to be a sportsman, and escape (in these Income-tax days) the ex- pense of dogs, gun, powder, shot, sporting-apparel, and the game- licence.
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