Phrenology sets the question for ever at rest. All people have thirty-three faculties. Now there are but twenty-four letters in the alphabet; yet how many languages--some six thousand we believe, each of which is susceptible of many dialects! No wonder, then, that you might as well try to count all the sands on the sea-shore as all the species of sportsmen. There is, therefore, nothing to prevent any man with a large and sound development from excelling, at once, in rat-catching and deer-stalking--from being, in short, a universal genius in sports and pastimes. Heaven has made us such a man. Yet there seems to be a natural course or progress in pastimes. We do not now speak of marbles--or knuckling down at taw--or trundling a hoop--or pall-lall--or pitch and toss--or any other of the games of the school playground. We restrict ourselves to what, somewhat inaccurately perhaps, are called field-sports. Thus Angling seems the earliest of them all in the order of nature. There the new-breeched urchin stands on the low bridge of the little bit burnie! and with crooked pin, baited with one unwrithing ring of a dead worm, and attached to a yarn-thread--for he has not yet got into hair, and is years off gut--his rod of the mere willow or hazel wand, there will he stand during all his play-hours, as forgetful of his primer as if the weary art of printing had never been invented, day after day, week after week, month after month, in mute, deep, earnest, passionate, heart-mind-and-soul-engrossing hope of some time or other catching a minnow or a beardie! A tug--a tug! With face ten times flushed and pale by turns ere you could count ten, he at last has strength, in the agitation of his fear and joy, to pull away at the monster--and there he lies in his beauty among the gowans and the greensward, for he has whapped him right over his head and far away, a fish a quarter of an ounce in weight, and, at the very least, two inches long! Off he flies, on wings of wind, to his father, mother, and sisters, and brothers, and cousins, and all the neighbourhood, holding the fish aloft in both hands, still fearful of its escape, and, like a genuine child of corruption, his eyes brighten at the first blush of cold blood on his small fumy fingers. He carries about with him, up-stairs and down-stairs, his prey upon a plate; he will not wash his hands before dinner, for he exults in the silver scales adhering to the thumb-nail that scooped the pin out of the baggy's maw--and at night, "cabined, cribbed, confined," he is overheard murmuring in his sleep--a thief, a robber, and a murderer, in his yet infant dreams!