No longer can we hail the "officious link-boy's smoky light," except during a dense thick, pea-soup coloured fog in the suicidal month of November. Instead of paved streets we have macadamised roads, albeit, there are some wiseacres who are (to adopt the old joke) _putting their heads together_ to form a wooden pavement. We have light broughams and neat cabs instead of the rattling "agony" or hackney coach; iron vessels have taken the place of the "wooden walls of Old England," though our gallant tars are still "hearts of oak;" light French wines have driven good old humble port from our cellars, much to the advantage of gouty subjects. Last, not least, the improved system of locomotion enables the sportsman to hunt from London, to enjoy his breakfast and return to his dinner in the metropolis, to run down to Ascot, Epsom, Egham, Brighton, Croydon, Sandown Park, Windsor, and Goodwood races, and be back at night, while the follower of old Isaac Walton may kill his trout in some of the Berkshire or Hampshire streams and enjoy the pleasure of his (the fish's) company at a seven o'clock dinner in London. Of course, occasionally there are discomforts connected with the rail, for on a fine Summer's day it is far more agreeable to view the country from a travelling chariot, britchka, or stage-coach, than to be shot forth like an arrow from a crossbow, at an awful rate, amidst a hissing, whizzing, ear-piercing, shrill, sharp noise, something between a catcall in the gallery of some transpontine theatre on Boxing Night and the war-whoop of the Ojibbeway Indians after a scalping-party in North America. Then the odour! Instead of the scent of the brier, the balmy bean-field, the cottage-side honeysuckle, the jessamine, you have an essence of villanous compounds--sulphur, rank oil, and soot. Again, the railway traveller occasionally finds his luggage missing; sometimes it is lost; our only wonder is that the above does not happen more frequently when we find the platform filled with loungers of all classes. Whether there are more fatal accidents by rail (in proportion to the excess of travellers) over those who formerly journeyed by road we know not for certain, but we are disposed to think there are not. Therefore, to sum up, if the question was "Road _versus_ Rail," taking all the pros and cons into consideration, we should give the verdict for the defendant. The modern lover of field sports is no longer a drunken, rollicking, two or four-bottle man; he prefers the society of the ladies in the drawing-room to that of the half-inebriated gentlemen in the dining-room; he dresses in a becoming manner, seldom swears, and, as far as his means go, keeps open house. What a contrast is this to the sportsman of bygone days! Perhaps, however, the following is the most curious picture of the sporting life and rude habits of the English country gentleman of the olden time, extant.