Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 393, July 1848
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
Far are we from insinuating that Mr Scrope is at all liable to the
remarks contained in the foregoing extract. On the contrary, we
hold him to be a man of vigorous mind and acute eye, and any thing
but a contemptible foe to the stags, after the measure of his own
experience. If he is deficient at all, it is in the poetry and
higher mysteries of the art, which hardly would be expected from a
stranger, whose initiation was necessarily late. Waverley, though a
respectable shot, and a man of literary taste, would, we apprehend,
have described the driving and disposition of the tainchel less
effectively, and certainly far less truly, than Fergus M'Ivor; so
great a difference is there betwixt the craft of the master and
his pupil. Let Mr Scrope, therefore, rest content with the laurels
he has won, and the trophies he has taken from the forest. Not
unforgotten is his name in Atholl, nor unloved. Let him be a guide
to the Southren, but he must not dream of rivalling the Stuarts in
woodcraft, or Stoddart in the science of piscation.
Of Mr St John's "Wild Sports of the Highlands," we have already
spoken in terms of unqualified praise. A more delightful volume was
never adapted for the pocket of the sportsman: a more truthful or
observant work has seldom issued from the pen of the naturalist. His
sketches and pictures of deer-stalking we allow to be as perfect in
their way as the compositions of Landseer; and having said so much,
we shall not make any further call upon that gentleman's blushes.
Still, even his experience is limited, and his knowledge imperfect.
He has given us a brilliant account of his own exploits upon the
hill, but he has not lived long enough in the wilder haunts of the
deer accurately to understand their habits. Not so our authors, who
for years have been denizens of the mountains, speaking the tongue
of the Gael, wearing the native garb, and following the chase with
an ardour and enthusiasm unparalleled in these degenerate days.
Gentlemen who complain of the inferior accommodation afforded by
some of the more distant hostelries of Scotland--who are shocked
at the absence of warming-pans, and tremulously nervous about
your sanatory condition, when subjected to the enormity of damp
sheets--how would you like to spend a few nights on the misty
hill-side, or even in the hut of the hunters? We shall take you if
you please to the latter spot, merely premising that, in order to
reach it, we must cross the Findhorn, now roaring down in spate. A
terrible stream is that Findhorn, as Mr St John well knows; but we
question whether he ever ventured to ford it on the rise, as was
done by one of the Stuarts. For the information of distant friends,
we beg to put our imprimatur to the following description of this
furious Highland flood, which rolled between the residence of the
hunters and their favourite ground.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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