features of which are usually venison-steaks, hot cornbread, and coffee, the whisky-flask is handed round, and all having taken a smile,' merely to prevent the morning air from injuring them, 'boot and saddle' is the word, and each, gun in hand, mounts his horse. The very dogs on such an occasion feel that something of importance is to be done, and burying their canine war-hatchets, forget to have a free fight amongst themselves, reserving their powers for the tough business instinct warns them is at hand. The order of the day is usually this: There is generally some one or two in the party who have an old steady dog or two called 'start-dogs,' broken exclusively to run nothing but bear. These ride in front round the headlands of the field, the rest of the party keeping with the main pack, a hundred yards or so in the rear. When the leaders come to where a bear has either entered or left the field, the 'start-dogs' immediately own the scent, and open on the trail; the main pack are cheered on, and then comes a burst of dog-music that would do a cross countryman's heart good. The hunters throw down the fence-rails, which are easily replaced, and pass out. Sometimes the bear's den, generally an old tree-top that has been snapped off in some gale, is not more than two or three hundred yards from the fence, a bear having a decided objection to residing very far from his feeding-ground. On some occasions, he is surprised in his hold, where he sits on his hams with quite a Fitz-James 'come one, come all' expression on his countenance, and regards the dogs with what they consider a by no means inviting manner. Then comes the excited rush of the hunters, who, hearing the baying of the pack, dismount; and each hurries through the cane or brush as best he may, to get the first shot. At other times, the quarry has a shrewd guess as to what is in the wind when he first hears the cry of the hounds, and puts his best leg first to get as far into the impenetrable recesses of the cane-brake as possible; the stout bamboos bend like rye-grass before his weight, and close in his rear, making it very difficult for the dogs to follow, and impossible for the hunters, who have to ride the best way they can, guided by the yelling of the hounds. I have known a bear get clear away very often owing to the impassable nature of the jungle. Clumsy as the beast looks, he is by no means inactive, and can travel very fast.

Occasionally, when very fat, he trees,' that is, climbs a tree, at once, even when not particularly pressed by his foes; at other times, he is so bullied and pinched by them, that he is forced to ascend. This is always a fatal step, as the dogs remain under the tree and bay him until some of the hunters arrive, when a well-placed ball generally finishes him. The shot, the death-mote sounded on a horn, soon bring up the stragglers of the hunt, when, if the burst has not been too severe or lasted too long, the game is left to be disembowelled by a negro or two, then placed on a mule, and borne in triumph to the plantation, the sportsmen starting back to the field, to see whether another bear has visited it. I should here mention that very savage dogs are not the best for this sport; a bull-dog, who would seize a bear and hang on to him, would come to grief instantly; he would be killed, as they say out west, 'before he knew what hurt him.' The best dogs are those with whom discretion is the better part of valour, curs who will watch their opportunity, and jump in, giving the bear a sharp pinch, and bound away again, to enjoy their little practical joke in safety. In wild cattle-hunting, the reverse is the case, and I have frequently owed my life to my having had severe dogs.

Bears are never stalked in the same way as deer, although occasionally the still hunter' comes across one in the woods; it will be as well, then, for him to make a sure shot, for a wounded bear is by no means a pleasant antagonist.

It is not at all an unusual occurrence in the backwoods to hear, towards evening, or early in the morning, the screams of a pig in mortal agony. The planter, overseer, or hunter who proceeds to the spot will find probably either a bear, a panther, or leopard cat making free with the pork; and if he cannot then obtain a good shot, the best thing he can do is to return to the plantation, get all the dogs he can collect, and returning to the dead porker, put his pack on the trail of the murderer, who, unwilling to leave his prey, generally trees at once, and it very seldom happens that the guilty animal escapes.

The first bear I ever shot I killed in Brazos County, Texas. I was in search of wild-turkeys; and just as I had disengaged myself from a thicket of rattan vines, I heard a noise at the top of a large tree, the head of which had been blown off, and up it a large sour winter grape-vine had climbed, the fruit of which hung ripe, and in great profusion. The noise I heard was made by a bear, who had ascended the tree to feast upon the grapes, and who had discovered my arrival about the same time that I first saw him. He immediately began his descent on the opposite side to that on which I was, keeping the trunk of the tree very carefully between himself and my gun; and as he came down, at about every two feet, he kept poking his head round, first on one side, then on the other, to see my position, as well as what I was doing. I waited quietly for him till he had reached within about six feet of the ground, holding the gun to my shoulder, ready to fire on the side where I next expected to see his head appear. Sure enough, as I expected, round came his brown muzzle, and, at the same instant, twelve large buck-shot from my righthand barrel cut half his neck away, severing the jugular vein, from which jets of blood came half as thick as my wrist. My poor pointer-bitch, Rose, who had been away on the scent of some turkeys, had returned just about the time I fired, and threw herself at once upon what she considered was an enormous turkey, but a convulsive blow of the dying brute sent her flying some ten or twelve feet. I shall never forget the expression on her face as she picked herself up, for fortunately she was not much hurt. As she approached very cautiously, she winded the bear, and set up all the hair on her back, uttering sharp barks; then she would look up into my face, and, wagging her tail, whine, asking, as plain as if she had spoken: What on earth have we got here?" It was the first bear she had ever seen, as, indeed, it was the first wild one I had seen either.

Owing to the open and warm winters, the bears do not 'house' themselves in the winter, as they do in Canada and the northern states, although they shut themselves up, when the cold northers' prevail, for a week or two. It is during the winter that the honey-stores of the wild-bees, and the hogs that roam the forest, suffer most, as there is then very little other food in the woods for them, except the grubs they find in the old decaying fallen trees.

As the planters often make prodigious crops of corn, they are sometimes obliged, for want of room, to put it for temporary accommodation into pens, made of rails, and roughly thatched, in the fields. These corn-cribs are frequently visited in the night by the bears, and many a vigil have I kept for them, rendered doubly long, as I could not permit myself the consolation of my pipe, the smell of which would have made all my trouble useless.

There are many good points about the southern bruins. They are quiet, harmless fellows, unless attacked and wounded; they then fight any odds bravely. The maternal instincts are very strong in the females, who will wage war to the last gasp in defence of their little ones. The old male is never seen with the female when she has cubs, probably from his having the same dislike to juveniles which some men have; he consequently leaves all the care

and trouble of his family to his wife, like a bear as he is. They seem to think that there is luck in odd numbers, too, for three cubs will be oftener found with an old she-bear than any other number.

I was once hunting for a sugar-plantation on Caney Creek, in Matagorda County. The summer had been excessively dry; all the ponds had dried up, and so had the small streams, except here and there where there were deep holes. I had been accustomed both night and morning to seek a large and deep lake which lay in the forest about a mile and a half from the house. To this lagoon, wild animals of all descriptions resorted for water, and I had on each visit been able to secure two or three deer, varied occasionally by a wild cow or hog. It was on the 3d of September 1858 that I rode out to this place one afternoon about four o'clock, and having tied my horse where he could not be observed, repaired to my usual place of concealment to watch for game. The first animal that came within rifle-range was an old Mexican boar, but as he was worthless for meat, I allowed him to drink and depart in peace. Presently, the fluttering of some robins, as they are called, a kind of migratory thrush, shewed from their hurry and clucking cry that some intruder had disturbed them. I had not long to wait to see what it was, for out rolled, with their peculiarly droll waddle, an old bear with her three, five, or six months' old cubs. They were about fifty yards from me, and right to windward, and whilst they were drinking, I stretched myself flat on my stomach, resting the rifle in the fork of a peg I had set in the ground, and from which I had made many dead shots previously, and prepared to fire whenever the old lady should turn her head to me, so that I could get a fair shot at her eye. It may seem to those not acquainted with the subject, that the eye of a bear is a very small mark to shoot at, and so it is; but the orifice in the skull is very large, although the eye itself is small-a ball, therefore, placed in or near the eye is certain, if fired from the front, to find the brain. She soon turned her head; and taking a very careful aim, I shot her through the corner of her right eye--the bullet, as I afterwards discovered, passing out at the base of the left ear. She fell without a struggle, not even a kick of her legs. The cubs did not seem to be aware that anything particular had happened, as I had hoped would be the case if I made a good shot; and I proceeded to load so that I could dispose of them at my leisure. Those who have never loaded a rifle when lying flat on the ground can form no idea of its difficulty; I have very often had to do this, and speak from experience. I succeeded in killing the three cubs, and then rode into the plantation, to have a cane cart and mules sent out to bring in the game. The house was full of company-several young ladies staying there from neighbouring plantations, for a dance which was to be given the next evening. Proud enough I was as I rode in at the head of my prizes, for even in Texas it is not often any one has the luck to bag four bears of an evening. The mother was not in very prime condition, but the cubs were perfect lumps of grease, and would have delighted Poll Sweedlepipe's father or Mr Finch. Many bottles were filled with bears-oil for the ladies' hair; and much rejoicing was heard in the negro cabins at the prospect of a good feast of fat bar-meat,' for next to 'possum, the negroes love that delicacy. For myself, I know of no better food; it is a cross between very nice pork and tender beef, some of it being as white as a chicken, whilst other portions are dark in colour when cooked. The paws and liver are esteemed the daintiest tit-bits.

It is now many years since, that a party of us were encamped on the edge of a cane-brake for the purpose of bear-hunting. The leader of our party was an old gaunt trapper, with a head as smooth, as polished, and as destitute of hair as a pumpkin, though his

moustache and beard were of enormous dimensions,
which gave him, when without his 'coon-skin cap, a
very singular appearance. One of the party at last
asked him what had made him lose all the hair from
the scalp. 'Boys,' said he, 'look a hyar: I somehow
guess it wur an old bar I shot once in the spring of
the year, and I put some on her ile on this child's har.
I reckon she wur a-shedding her coat, and her grease
wur no account, for arter I'd bin a-using on it, my
har began to spill out, and I lost every dog and bristle
on it.
It mout hev bin that, and then, agin, it
moutn't. Boys, just hand us the whisky-gourd; it
most allus makes me dry when I thinks on it. I'll
turn in now, for we'll hev to be stirring pretty peart
in the morning.'

'Comrades, good-night!' the trapper 'threw
His length beneath the oak-tree shade,
With leafy couch already made,

A bed nor comfortless nor new
To him, who took his rest whene'er

The hour arrived, no matter where.'

The following anecdote goes far to prove that a bear has only room for one idea at a time in his head. A party of overland emigrants on their way across the plains from St Louis, Missouri, to El Passo, and thence to California, had arrived somewhere on the Green River. From this train a hunter had strayed off in search of game, and came upon a bear in a creek bottom, who was up a persimmon-tree loaded with ripe fruit, which he was busily eating, whilst a wild-boar beneath was revelling in the overripe dainties which fell in showers from the bear's clumsy operations in the tree. It was evident from the glances bruin threw below from time to time that he was jealous of the hog, and by no means relished playing provider even involuntarily for the other; and he often expressed his disapprobation by short and savage growls, which the boar only answered by an occasional satisfied grunt. The hunter noted all these signs, and saw that very little more was necessary to make Cuffee's wrath boil over, which he would be certain to vent upon the pig; he therefore drew the buck-shot from one barrel of his gun, and substituted for it a load of dust-shot, with which, from his ambush, he stung the bear pretty severely. Down came the bear instantly to chastise the boar for adding this injury to insult, fully convinced that the smart he suffered was caused by the pig. The battle was a sharp one, though not of long duration, and bruin speedily killed his antagonist, but not before the hog had inflicted a mortal wound, by gashing open with his sharp tusks the belly of his opponent, who speedily bled to death. Thus,' said the hunter with pardonable vanity, I killed a bear and a wild-boar with a charge of No. 7 shot, which I believe nobody else has ever done.'

CHEERFULNESS.

THE storm but makes its handmaid, Calm, more sweet;
The hours of gloom the slow succeeding light
Richer appear; fair Dawn that follows Night,
With glory-beaming face and golden feet,
Seems doubly precious if the tempest beat
Against our frail bark in the murky hours;
And far more fragrant are the nodding flowers,
After the rain-cloud drops its water-sheet.
Then let us not complain nor murmur if
We storms encounter on our devious track;
There is an antidote for every grief,
And light behind the cloud however black;
There's far more shining gold than base alloy,
And far less cause for sorrow than for joy.

Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON, and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH. Also sold by all Booksellers.

THE OFFICIAL MIND. THE Official Mind is of no mushroom growth. It has its deep-struck roots far down in the rich mould of history, but it was a delicate plant, and required favourable conditions to mature it. In early times, these were rare indeed. The hero and the monarch, Mr Carlyle's can-ning men, were bitter enemies to anything like an official spirit, and clapped an extinguisher upon it wherever they had a chance. Indeed, these burly, prominent figures, several sizes too large for the canvas on which their biographers have painted them, were intolerant of Jacks-in-office. Perhaps it was not out of pure philanthropy that they levelled so many poppies, perhaps it was the mere imperiousness of self-will, but the fact remains. We must not look for traces of the Official Mind when Maccabee is routing idolaters, or Camillus slaying Gauls.

In old Athens, the Official Mind found its refuge in the jury-box; in old Jerusalem, it took sanctuary in the vestiaries and offices of the Temple, and it flourished among the priests and doctors of the latter days, the days of Roman vassalage, when the Sanhedrim administered the laws after their own narrow fashion. In Athens, on the other hand, the grand jury, that respectable band of elders whom Aristophanes dragged upon the stage in that screaming farce, the Wasps, were official in the utmost sense of the word, and consequently unpopular.

Unpopularity is, however, an atmosphere by no means fatal to the Official Mind. In moderate doses, its effects appear rather invigorating than the reverse; they brace the official nerves, and impart a wholesome tonic to the system. But there is danger in excess. Violent storms of popular abhorrence are more than the Official Mind can endure, and it bends or breaks, usually preferring the former alternative.

As a general rule, the ancients were not very favourably disposed to give fair-play to the natural tendencies of the official spirit. It was not until they ceased to be classical, that they really gave up the limbs of the body-politic to fetters of red tape. The pro-consuls and tax-gatherers of old Rome had shewn the cloven foot pretty freely in subject provinces, and had governed with a sublime scorn for the feelings of the natives, but the Lower Empire surpassed these casual flights by organising a complete plan of pedantic government. Constantine and Justinian exhibited the

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same spirit. It was through official spectacles that the former, in especial, was content to survey the world. Through this artfully tinted medium, he watched, with charming equanimity, the massacre of Arian Greens by orthodox Blues, the ungrateful treatment of Belisarius, and the effects of an oriental etiquette upon his crouching people.

Those spectacles exist, even to the present day, heedfully preserved, no doubt, in some peculiarly sacred pigeon-hole of the public departments. Their uses are manifold. Through them, a well-seasoned lord of the Admiralty can placidly survey our dockyards, without deriving annoyance from the sight of worm-eaten hulls, of fine ships finished just in time to be sawn in two, cut down, banked up, and variously metamorphosed at enormous cost, and to no ultimate good. Through them, it is possible to contemplate an artillery experiment in such a manner as wholly to negative the convictions of those who judge by the naked eye. The Horse Guards lend them to the Foreign Office, the Foreign Office accommodates the Poor Law Commissioners with a loan of them, and from the Treasury to the Board of Works, the invaluable spectacles are used in turn by all.

The Official Mind did not find itself in congenial company during the brutal, scrambling period of the middle ages. Men shewed too much individuality of character, were too greedy and pushing, too regardless of clerkship and letters, for the holders of office to develop their instinctive theories. Indeed, the Official Mind cannot thrive without abundant stationery. Deprive it of pen and paper, and it will pine like a flower in the dark. Lord Saye, whom the Kentish rebels under Cade accused of the sinfulness of building a paper-mill, must have been of an official order of intellect, if we may trust the defence which Shakspeare puts into his mouth. But Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, the arch shutter-up of monasteries, was probably as fine a type of the true placeman as England ever saw. He was no saint; his political career is an ugly one; but he could act at times as Endicott or Prynne might have acted. Thus, when chancellor, his lordship happened to meet in Eastcheap with a gaily attired man, whom the Puritan biographer calls a ruffian, but whose ruffianism seems to have consisted in the length of his hair. Cromwell was, or feigned to be, a sworn believer in the unloveliness of lovelocks.' No sooner did my lord chancellor set eyes on these unlucky ringlets, than he

or substitution, is in its judgment a vile heresy. It never sanctions what is new, save on compulsion and under protest, and prides itself most of all on its lack of sympathy with the vulgar emotions and wishes of the non-official world.

There is a deep conviction in the Official Mind that the masses of mankind exist for its behoof and benefit. Even little Tom Todgers, who will one day be head of his room, Corridor Ă, Number 99, at the Seal and Docket Office, has a calm certainty of self-importance that would charm a philosopher. Tom may, and often does, call himself a 'public servant,' with edifying humility; but when Mr Bull, in square-toed shoes and city-made coat, drops in on business, the clerk's arched eyebrows and lively whistling shew little respect for that representative master. I believe pompous Doctor Wigsby imagines little boys to exist for the especial good of head-masters; and I am sure old Sir Thomas yonder, purple-faced and white of whisker, thinks that a general could get on much better without an army than soldiers without a general.

All charitable or pious foundations, colleges, schools, hospitals, everything from an almshouse to a scholarship at the universities, have a tendency to decay. Ralph Crutchley and Dame Dorothy leave their money and lands, and trustees are appointed, and palatial buildings with great incomes are one day seen as the harvest from that long-sown seed of bequests. But one day, a cry of Shame! is set up. The funds have been scandalously mishandled, the true meaning of the founder ignored, the charitable intent frustrated. All this is done by the Official Mind. The servants have encroached, inch by inch or ell by ell, and are now despots of the foundation. Warden, master, governors call them what you will-they began as salaried stewards, and now they are lords of all. They have jobbed here, plundered there: fat lands are let at long leases to a warden's nephew, well-paid posts are given to the governors' sons; the charity is stinted, or maintained as a transparent pretence, and the revenues flow into the pockets of the managers. Then comes a great scandal, and a hard fight. Sometimes the outsiders prevail, sometimes the unjust stewards; but never, in either event, is the Official Mind induced to see anything in the case beyond a most wanton meddling with a most estimable set of functionaries.

A policeman, a post-office clerk, a collector of taxes each must, in a constitutional country, be considered neither more nor less a servant of the public than a prime minister. But it is so natural for human nature, when decked out in the veriest scrap or remnant of authority, to assume imperial airs, that few underlings in state-pay think otherwise of themselves than as the masters of the public. Policeman Z is a good average constable, but a little too vain of his badge and truncheon. He does not, perhaps, assume any offensively magisterial tone in speaking to you or me, whose coats are whole at the elbow, and who may possibly have the honour of even Sir Richard's acquaintance, but he is rather dogmatic and Jovelike in the courts and by-streets where the poor congregate. He 'worrets' small householders, and 'nags' at individuals low down the social ladder, but yet as innocent of garrotting as they are of grammar. Z means no harm, but it is a dulcet thing to be obeyed.

Curiously enough, the Official Mind lies latent in some occult part of most men's dispositions, ready to start forth at the Ithuriel touch of promotion. A stout negro or mulatto, who has hoed and picked, picked and hoed, for years, is suddenly made driver on his owner's plantation, and in an instant he regards his captive brethren as a sheep-dog regards the sheep, and lays on the whip with a heavier hand than even the Connecticut overseer. What usher in a private school is so vigilant, so prying and peremptory, so

ready with the cane, as the monitor of a public school upon the Arnold plan? Black Tom, as a private soldier, was well liked by his comrades-a bold, frank fellow, rather too prone to fisticuffs. Tom is a sergeant now, a harsh, stern member of the noncommissioned, and his captain is always beset with complaints and reports from Tom against the men, and from the men against tyrant Tom.

The Official Mind is rife abroad. In Russia, it forms the principal stumbling-block in the way of the reforming Czar. It has been so cherished and dandled by dead-and-gone emperors, that it has grown up like a great parasitic plant hugging and blighting the tree of national welfare. The Tchinn, or official nobility of Russia, may be fairly called the incarnation of the Official Mind. The Tchinn is a wide word, embracing ministers, civil and military officers, government clerks, lawyers, doctors, even governesses and tutors everybody but merchants, soldiers, and mujiks. All these were noble by ukase and edict, and their power of bemuddling the accounts, sucking the treasury dry, keeping up an army on paper, a mighty empire on paper, a contented people on paper, turned the head, and finally broke the heart of the Czar Nicholas. When the Official Mind of Russia is overcome, the country will have started in its new and prosperous career, but not till then.

Prussia is the Utopia of prigs, being to the official mind of Europe what China, with its aristocracy of M.A.s and D.C.L.8, is to that of Asia. The German language, and those peculiarities of speech and thought which make the large-brained German race lag behind all other Westerns, help the Official Mind to rule at its liking. Where people love better to theorise than to act, and where the mental muscles of a nation are flabby and inert for all practical uses, a bureaucracy has easy work before it. It is more surprising that quick, fiery France should be so docile to the manipulations of the Official Mind. That is a subject not soon to be explained. Nobody, perhaps, French or alien, really understands France, the apathy of the people oddly contrasting with bygone convulsions and throes of rage, and the coldness of the ashes around the sleeping or spent volcano. But the fact is patent that the old Bucephalus of politics is tame enough now for anybody to drive. Prefects, sub-prefects, mayors, go any lengths in their experiments on the patient creature, and not an incipient kick, not a wicked look or ear laid back, shews any sign of unsubdued spirit. Jacques Bonhomme is richer than of old, and more malleable.

The Official Mind is consistent in abhorrence of innovations, especially when supported by excellent reasons and fanned by the public breath. It scowled on steam, pouted at the electric telegraph, pooh-poohed gas, sneered at Main Drainage, and was sulky about Free Trade. It was very angry when, in the nick of time, a little before the Crimean War, meddlesome civilians persisted in tormenting the authorities about rifled muskets and long-range cannon. It was very severe in its opposition to what was called the moustache movement, shaved the soldiers' chins until the razor was wrested from it, and finally fainted on being preached to by a clergyman with a beard. It was slow to believe that iron-plated ships could swim, and if the Volunteers would have consented to be snubbed, would have cheerfully performed that duty. Indeed, a volunteer, in any line of life, is the Black Beast and darling antipathy of the Official Mind. The Official Mind views a nation as old-fashioned nurses regard children: let them speak when spoken to, obey orders, and ask no impertinent questions. The Official Mind detests to be asked for the reason why.'

Is it necessary to say that the Official Mind is not compulsorily an heirloom in public or private life? Is it needful to set down that there are officials of every degree, from archbishops to tide-waiters, wholly free from the narrow and selfish spirit here alluded to?