As moralists are fond of regarding the skittle-ground as the demoraliser of the lower orders, I will take the trouble to show it as the preserver of the public peace. Well do I remember, in the vicinity of some public works, a temporary and hasty skittle frame erected in a dell, where the pins were old and ragged, the ball pock-marked and cracked, the frame so shaky that half the pins fell from vibration, brute force being exalted to a level far above mechanical skill, and the players were rough, brutal men, of the true navigator stamp. Low as the game is always considered, it was evidently new to them; and very simple and childlike they looked as they poised the ball in their rough hands and hurled it with giant force, but small result, against the pins.

They were like savages with a piano-wondering and pleased. I believe the amusement, humble as it was, saved the neighbourhood from the annoyance of numerous fights, and the rude players many a bruised and battered head.

The prejudice against skittles is of early origin. About 1780 the magistrates caused all the frames in or about the city of London to be taken up, and prohibited the playing at Dutch pins or nine pins. Sapient as usual were these magistrates, and painfully moral. I suppose bear-baiting had become an intolerable nuisance; and an example being necessary to be made, skittles were consequently put down. Let an unprejudiced reader look with an unjaundiced eye at a picture of a skittle ground of the time, and tell me if aught immoral

VOL. IV.

or inimical to the public welfare could be harboured in the minds of those elegant bowlers-those placid consumers of an idle hour-those conservative men who slept at night, and rallied round their church and king in the day? Imagine a garden with an elegant arbour at the end, and trees implanted at short intervals along the sides. Imagine a wall up which trail the ripe apricot and the fruitful vine, and beyond which stretches the open country for many a mile. Imagine the flowers in such a garden clustering at the side, and the centre laid out as a skittle ground. Imagine a select party of half-a-dozen gentlemen, dressed in the fashionable costume of the period, some seated in the arbour before-mentioned quaffing their punch from an old china bowl that would have made the late Mr. Bernal's eyes glisten, others disposed along the border of the frame lounging in attitudes of refined elegance, while he who poises the ball before it is hurled at the still erected pins does it with an air that would not have disgraced the discus thrower of antiquity. Shall such a scene as this, with the pure heaven above and the pure earth beneath, be compared for one moment with the hot-hells of Piccadilly, or the bloody cockpit of Westminster? Happy, indeed, am I to find that this noble and ancient game survived the malicious attack made upon it by the civic magistrates; and that it so far recovered, that in 1786 "a respectable society of gentlemen, esteemed good players," found it of sufficient importance to frame a set of rules for its government.

Why should I hesitate to avow that I know no better way of spending a holiday than walking across certain pleasant meadows on a fine September day to a rural "good dry ground" that I know, standing on an eminence a few miles out of London, with open windows, commanding a prospect that St. Paul's might envy? Let me only have the companionship of three congenial friends, whose skill is balanced with a nice equilibrium that gives an exciting interest to the game. Let our host be prepared for our approach the day before; let the coolest of beer and the neatest of dinners be provided; let our game be attended by the smartest, handiest, and quickest of "settersup of pins," and I am happy-we are all happy. I do not envy thee, thou brain-throbbing chess-player, stuffed in thy close divan, nor thee, thou patient angler, courting the stream to give up its unwilling treasures, nor masquerading Toxopholite, shooting into space, nor skilful rower in thy slender barque, nor brawny cricketer in the broiling sun: let me alone, I am content. Do not look at me so piteously, my saintly friend; I am not wholly lost. I shall return home some time in the cool of the evening, not very late; I shall not be drunk-I shall not beat my wife-I shall not desert my children-I shall not become a warning to my fellow men. I have heard of miserable wretches who, in the last agony of that dreadful morning, when the chaplain is waiting with his book, the hangman twiddling with the rope, and the public howling for its prey, have traced their first step in crime to the moment when they entered a skittle-ground. May such a confession lie lightly on their souls, for never was falser word uttered, or lamer conclusion drawn from unfounded premises. The skittle-ground in such a case was not the polluter but the polluted.

If the one-sided moralist complains to me of a class of men who have arisen out of skittle-grounds, and are a discredit to society, I tell him that he follows in the wake of partial legislation, which puts down the little improprieties of the lower orders, and leaves the vices of the rich untouched. We all know how extremely virtuous society is when poor Bill Floorer, the skittle sharp, is had up before a Draconian magistrate for winning five pounds in the simple disguise of a baker or a butcher. The great complaint against Bill is that he is not genteel, he lives in a low street, he sends his children to a low school, he puts his small capital in a low savings'-bank, he pays for all he buys, his taxgatherer never calls twice, and no tailor duns him for his bill. But the Dis-Honourable Mr. Deadlycue is a man of a very different stamp: his income is got from playing Pool, from four till ten, and that is highly genteel. Mr. Deadlycue has chambers in the Albany, a box in the Highlands, he never pays his tradesmen, and his tailor has become a bankrupt in despair; but while Bill Floorer is passing a melancholy month in the House of Correction, the Dis-Honourable Mr. Deadlycue is lounging in the drawing-room of Lady Mayfair.

MUSINGS FOR THE MONTH.

BY FRANK E. SMEDLEY.

PART III.-OCTOBER.

SEPTEMBER, the month when Britons devote their lives to birdkilling, has passed away! Once again, as at Trafalgar, our sanguine country has seen her anticipations realised; England expected every man to do his duty-every man knew his duty was to kill partridges (at Trafalgar it happened to be Frenchmen)—and every man has done it; for the few exceptions-some pitiable, for they could not-some despicable, for they would not-only prove the rule. Innumerable partridges have been killed and eaten; enough bread-sauce has been consumed to fill a whole fleet of Chinese junks (themselves not unlike sauce-boats in appearance), together with gravy sufficient to float all the monster playthings. An amount of powder and shot has been blazed away at the feathered victims, which, differently directed, would have rendered revolted sepoys as thoroughly extinct as Mastodons. Men and dogs have risen early, and laboured hard in their vocations; the fair sex have been at a discount; the lover has neglected his inistress, the husband his wife (though that, if the late lamented Mrs. Caudle be not a scandalous caricature, must not be laid solely to the account of the partridges), and the entire social fabric has been unhinged, for the sake of making "a good bag."

What a dream of happiness was the honeymoon of Lady Louisa Mousseline de Laine! She had married the man of her choice, the

fortunate youth who had called forth all the pure and lasting (?) affections of that warm young heart. And a lucky dog Charley Cutaway thought himself, when, during the final polka, on the last night of Almack's, the golden ringlets that rested on his shoulder were shaken by emotion, and a pair of coral lips whispered that their owner loved him. And when, having been "coupled together," as Charley called it, at St. George's, and suffered a very severe wedding-breakfast in Park-lane afterwards, they found themselves rowing by moonlight on Windermere's glassy waters, they each, in their own fashion, voted matrimony a most desirable institution-Louisa declaring it "Elysium," and Charley, "the jolliest dodge going." But September drew nigh; sanguine England expected every man to do his duty, and Charley Cutaway had no mind to disappoint her; so, on the thirty-first of August, the happy pair flew on the wings of love along the Midland Counties' railroad to Stubbleton Hall, in -shire. Tired with her journey, Louisa retired early, and her husband followed her example. About four, a.m., she was aroused from a somewhat fanciful dream that she was a sylph, engaged in hanging a honiton lace veil (bought at Howel and James's for fifteen guineas, and very cheap at the money) over the moon to keep the flies away, by a man's voice shouting in

her ear

"Ponto! I say, steady there. By Jove he's run' in upon his birds!" "Has he?" exclaimed Louisa, her thoughts still in the moon; "I hope he has not torn my veil"-then becoming a little more alive to a sense of her situation, she added—" Why, Charley, you were hallooing in your sleep!"

"Eh! was I, my dear ?" replied her husband, "I was dreaming that confounded dog ran in and spoilt my first shot. Four o'clock ! I may as well turn out-Hawkins was to be here at a quarter to five -you'd better go to sleep again, Lou."

This was good advice, but it would have been easier to follow it, if Charles, while dressing, had not chanced to upset a bag of shot, which pattered down on the floor like a domestic hailstone; and in seeking to remedy this disaster, had trod upon a percussion cap, which exploded with a loud crack, leading Louisa to believe that his powderflask had burst, and they were all about to be blown up. At last, however, he departed, and Louisa went to sleep again, and never woke up till past nine; which, together with the four o'clock disturbance, gave her a headache. She got pretty well through the morning, having luckily bought the September TRAIN at the railway station the day before. First she read a romantic tale therein, and settled in her own mind that the hero must have been exactly like her own Charley; and felt considerably surprised at the general susceptibility of the heroine: knowing that when the Diddleton Railway smashed, and the paternal Mousseline de Laine had found it convenient to visit Boulogne for three months, she had experienced no sentimental feelings -but, to be sure, she had been better brought up, and learnt her mission at Farthingal-house, at the rate of two hundred pounds per annum then she played a polka or two, and sang a German song, in which the Rhine was mentioned only six times, and love and glory thrice;-then

she went out for a walk all by her little self, but mistrusting a suspicious looking cow, came back prematurely and told the butler she had been frightened by a wild bull; -- then she dressed for dinner, and sat down to wait for Charles. At half-past seven she felt more hungry and desolate than she had ever done since she was six years old, and Miss Backboard locked her up in the school-room for repudiating Pinnock;-at a quarter to eight she decided that Charles's gun had gone off of its own accord (an attribute all women firmly believe fire-arms to possess) and killed its master; so, feeling very unhappy and anxious, she indulged in that cheerful feminine occupation, a good cry. As the clock struck eight she wiped her eyes, and was going to ring the bell to send all the servants out to look for the body, when bang, bang, went a double-barrel, and her husband's footsteps sounded in the hall.

"Charley, dearest, and are you really uninjured? Oh, how wretched I have been about you!"

"Wretched! Well that's a good joke! Why I never felt jollier in all my life; any one would think that partridges bagged sportsmen, and not vice versa."

"And you are quite certain nothing has happened to you?"

"Oh, lots of things; I've knocked all the skin off my knuckles, and torn my jacket half up the back, falling into a dry ditch; and I've got my legs full of thorns, and I'm as tired as a dog, and as hungry as a hunter; so order dinner, there's a good little woman, and I'll be down in a brace of shakes." Louisa was a good little woman; but, as her husband had returned home possessed of as much brains as he took out with him, and had been the shooter, and not the shootee, she felt she was an injured wife, and must behave accordingly; but as she was very hungry, she condescended to ring and order dinner.

"Twere long to tell " how she ate in silence, and gave short crusty answers to the few things Charles found time to say during the meal; and how, after he at length discovered that something had gone wrong with her, and made one or two attempts to conciliate her, just as she was preparing to come round and graciously forgive him, she found he had fallen asleep so soundly, that it was by a kind of miracle he could be got to bed at all. This, and the various revulsions of feeling she was fated to undergo, ere she made up her mind that Charles was not really a brute, and September one of the trials to which it is a wife's duty to submit-and so asked her pretty friend, Mary Taffeta, to come and keep her company, and got up a little excitement by marrying her to a highly advantageous young curate, who didn't shoot-all this our space will not allow us to dilate upon, and we must beg our kind readers to imagine it for themselves. But during September and October, throughout the length and breadth of the land, many a wife, we fancy, will be found to indulge in "Musings for the Month," by no means dissimilar to those of Lady Louisa Mousseline de Laine.