thoroughly healthy tone of popular feeling in America towards us, and to that honest and able Envoy who now represents it amongst us.

I am not speaking" without book" when I say that the feeling of America towards England at this moment is markedly generous and kindly. The gauge by which I measure the sentiment is this. There is not throughout the States any class of the population who, from tradition as from instinct, look on us with as much coldness as the officers of the American navy. They are men of education and inte ligence, the equals of any service afloat. They are courteous, hospitable, and wellmannered; but I have always found that their reception of a Frenchman, a Russian, or an Italian on board one of their ships was distinguished by a heartier and more genial welcome than they extended to ourselves. Whether the fault was our own-whether a certain

British arrogance which we find it hard to divest ourselves of checked and arrested any budding cordiality or whether old memories of conflict, with all their oft-disputed results, imparted a coldness to their courtesy, I cannot say; but I can answer for the fact that American naval men were more cordial with foreigners than with us more at ease in their intercourse, and less troubled with reserve.

Now I am rejoiced to say that all this belongs to the past. I have lately seen an American squadron, under the command of an officer who, even in a land of brave men, stands conspicuous for gallantry; and I can declare that, without an exception, from the bronzed weather captain, the hero of fifty battles, to the youngest middy afloat, I heard nothing but words of kindness and good-will towards England-good wishes for her prosperity, and a hearty God-speed to her course among the nations!

There is nothing more quickly detected in a hunting-field than the riding of the man who has taken to the saddle somewhat late in life. He may be he generally is a bold rider he may go straight, flinch nothing, and keep a good place throughout; but there will be scores of things, some of them small ones, which will show that his cover experiences have not dated from his boyhood, and that his first "Tallyho's" did not issue from a young throat.

Without pausing to particularise a number of things in which the late rider differs from him who has been brought up to it, there is one I would single out as eminently significative, which is, that these men, no matter how well they ride, or how ardently they love the sport, never attain to that nice knowledge of the etiquette of the field which distinguishes other sportsmen, or