game by the appearance of a huge wild boar. The bristly monarch of the German forest had been tracked and driven upon a previous day into a _sau-garten_, an enclosure allotted for the purpose, and was now let out into the duke's chase. With eyes inflamed with fury, bristles erect, and white tusks protruding from under the blood-red wrinkles of his lip, he now dashed along, pursued by a few stanch mastiffs, more than one of which, when pressing too closely on the monster, atoned for his temerity with his life. Thus escorted, the fierce animal came careering down a long green alley, when one of the duke's counsellors, seized suddenly with a perilous ardour, brandished a boar-spear, planted himself in the middle of the path, and awaited the onset. In appearance he was not much of a Nimrod, being chiefly remarkable for the shortness of his legs and rotundity of his body, which seemed but ill at ease in a tight green hunting-coat, whilst the picturesque low-crowned hat and bunch of cock's feathers sat oddly enough above a jolly rubicund visage that might have belonged to Falstaff himself. The comical twinkle in his eye, which seemed to indicate his vocation to be that of court-jester in the drawing-room, rather than court-champion in the hunting-field, was quenched and replaced by a stare of visible uneasiness as the wild pig came bowling along, squinting ominously at him from under its shaggy eyebrows, and evidently wondering what manner of man thus rashly awaited its formidable charge. The worthy privy counsellor already puffed and perspired with his exertions, but still he manfully stood his ground, and, greeting his antagonist with the customary defiant cry of _Hui Sau!_ he lowered his broad, keen spear-point, and prepared for a deadly thrust. But the dangerous contest required a firmer and prompter hand than his. Evading the weapon, the boar darted forward, thrust himself between the legs of the portly sportsman, and, without injuring him, carried him fairly off, astride upon his back. At this moment a _char-à-banc_, containing the duchess, the Princess Theresa, and two other ladies, and escorted by the duke and some gentlemen on horseback, drove out of a cross-road, and the cavalcade obtained a full view of the scene. The piteous mien of the fat counsellor astride upon the pig, whose curly tail he grasped with a vehemence that augmented the indignation of the furious animal, was irresistibly ludicrous. There was a peal of laughter from the spectators, the duke swayed to and fro in his saddle with excess of mirth, and even the ladies caught the contagion. The joke, however, became serious earnest when the boar, by a sudden wriggle of his unclean body, shook off the counsellor, and turned upon him with the evident purpose of ripping his rotundity with his dangerous tusks. This occurred within a few steps of where I stood, and at the moment that the mirth of the spectators was exchanged for cries of anxious horror, and when the