The American Sporting Magazine, though yet in its infancy, exhibits a spirit of enterprize and a desire for improvement, which we are sure will not pass unrewarded, if our Trans-Atlantic friends possess any thing like the taste for field sports that their brethren have in this country.

It is published monthly (at Baltimore) each number containing about fifty pages of letter-press, and embellished with a very creditably executed engraving from some sporting subject. The colour of the wrapper is pink, with a woodcut, the back-ground formed by the hewn side of a rock, whereon appears the title of the work, on the ground is a racing cup, fishes, fowling-pieces, and dead game; a large bear's head graces one side and a stag's the other, while a fox's one peeps over the grassy mound on the top of the rock.

We extract the following amusing article from the July number, the latest arrived.

THE FOX-CHASE.

There never was a better horse than my horse Barney; and yet he has his "pickilarities," as Winfred Jenkins used to say, but not a bit of vice. He is young, too, only four years old; he is a bay horse, and a big horse, and his father was a full-bred English racer, and his mother was a black, bony, Irish mare. He takes after

his father, but the mother cannot be quiet in him, that's the plague on't; and yet be is nothing but a good one. He's master of any weight that ever wore boots; but he is all fire, and rushes at his work like a tiger. How can he help it, when, from nose to tailtip, he is all one great lump of elasticity? Just pass your hand, sir, over the top of his loins; there's the place that the cork lies. Convex, you see, it curves outward; no swag; none of your Thames tunnel work; hard as iron, too, rising and swelling into the hollow of your hand. That's the spot that Barney dates his jumps from; no wonder the ground seems to burn his hoofs, when he is in the field. Besides he has got a barrel like a beer-cask, a rag a-pelt devil as he is. Lord! what a day I had of it with him and his ways last Monday week. But you shall hear all about it.

"Jim," says I, on Sunday night -God forgive me!" give Barney his corn at five to-morrow morning; I shall be off at seven." I don't know what Jim had been at, but Barney's coat, next morning, looked as if it had been new varnished. "That's your sorts, Jim," 66 I. says Aye," says he, "he's in rare order, sir; I think I had best put him the long curb on." Well, away went Barney, with me on the top of him, creeping like a cat four miles to cover. Weather rather cloudy and moist, and the grass just in nice order to catch a killing scent, and to keep it, too. Four land-ends; there they were; Old Aaron, dogs, and a choice field of proper ones; not

a new coat among 'em, all real sçavans, none of your white corduroy gentry; worsted stockings and woollen cords upon every man of them. I saw it was to be any thing but going to sleep that day; dead earnest the very dogs had an air of business about them, and Old Aaron would deign to deal in nothing but monosyllables. Well, in they went into cover, slap off the road side, silent as death, not a dog to be seen or heard in fifteen seconds; it might have been dead midnight. Every horse moved off to his post at the bottom of the wood. I felt as if pulsation had stopped within me, and listened as if a forty-gun battery was going to open upon me at every instant. So it was; out bounced Reynard in a state of high displeasure. Oh! that I could but show you the curl of his lip, and his case of keen white ivory snappers, as he scoured past Barney and me. Presently I heard a rustling in the brush-wood, out springs old Prompter, and gives mouth like a cannonnade. What a crash followed !forty dogs at once let fly their

music.

Subitisque ulatibus omne Implevere nemus.

and off they went with the wind in their flank. In one minute after you might have covered them all with a counterpane. Radiating from different points towards one common centre, the lads in red joined, and off at a tangent. We had a burst of it for five hard miles, all sorts of places to get over, and not a single fall. The old horses took the timber like greyhounds; but Barney at every leap threw an arch like the dome of St. Paul's. He covered ground enough for three, and went at the rails as if he would have swallowed them, or

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as if he fancied he was carrying me over the walks of the King's Bench. Dang it," says I, "Barney, take it azy.' But it was no use. God forgive him his innocent mirth! for he would have his frolic; and, as for Jim's long curb, why Archimedes himself, with all the levers in Greece, could not have held my single horse Barney. I never knew the like of it; pastures, plantations, copse, turnips, stiff clay, and new ploughed, no matter, away went Barney, tossing the hedges behind him as a girl would her skipping-rope. But I had him hard and fast, hip and thigh, for all that, as you shall hear presently. It so happened we topped nicely into a large fallowfield, and a proper pelt we had across it. I manoeuvred master Barney into a little bit of a circle round it, so as to come up last to a most portentous five-bar gate, which closed the perspective. The rest of them went over before me like beauties, soft as satin, just missing the top bar. But Barney (the devil's in that horse) when he arrived, set at it as if the bars counted twenty instead of five; and lo! when his legs took the soft-plough ed land down hill on the t'other side, why his two fore-feet slipped from under him; his hind-legs followed, sliding in betwixt them right before his nose; his rump came with a squelch into the soil; I was pitched clean over his ears, and finished a most beautiful parabolic curve by letting on my head. Well, I gathered myself up, shook my feathers, found all was safe, dragged my head and eyes from out of the very bottom of my hat, and contemplated Barney. There he was, perched like a sphynx, or a kangaroo, or a great big rabbit, with his tail enfonce embossed deep in the soil.

I began to be afraid that the before-mentioned squelch, applied so unmercifully behind, had sent his soul flying out of his nose after the dogs. It was a most undig. nified attitude, quite unworthy of that noble animal, the horse. Barney seemed to be aware of it; so he got up slowly and turned round. But, my word! he had left his mark. There is nothing living that I know of, could have left such an impression as Barney's dos-ados, except it be the two monstrous hemispheres of the great fat cook at the King's Arms. It was scandalous to look at; but this is no time for such scenery. Well, as luck would have it, the dogs had come to a full check. Barney and I joined company. He was all the better I thought for his fall, and I was none the worse for it. But Reynard where was he? That was the problem; but to watch the working of it! Don't talk to me of instinct. Why it was as fair and as close reasoning as ever was heard in Grove Academy. I respect Euclid; but look at Jowler, Harpy, Beauty, Rattler, Tickler, and Dingle there, only see old Governor, he thought he had a syllogism hard and fast by the nose just now. Do, for justice sake, Mr. Attorney-general, do clap your wig upon that young bitch, Fanny. See, she is calling in old Commodore to council; how they are hammering at it. There is lemma and dilemma for you; syllogism, doubt, deduction, corollary: and once again old Prompter has hit off the demonstration, and catch him who

gown if ever dog did he is a gem of a dog. Hark to him, Merryman; good bitch, Gipsey; now, Tickler, Racket, Jewel, and Jessey, hark-forward all. There's music for you! Listen to that counter-tenor; hark to the thorough-bass running under it. Look at the country behind you, if you can, only see the dogs skelping up the side of that hill before you; look at Prompter just ahead of them, with his very eyes rooting into the scent. It mends every minute, and now they run it breast high; look at 'em floating at full speed along the edge of the horizon; down they go!

Ea turba cupidine prædæ

Per rupes, scopulosque, adituque, carentia saxa, Qua via difficilis, quaque est via nulla, feruntur!

Aye, that's it! There's nothing like a handy dictionary and a bit of book-learning, after all. Read the lines over again; no matter whether you understand Latin or not. It's not Latin; it's plain Enfilish. What is it but a pack of foxhounds driving like devils before you? u? Then stick in a few crags, rocks, ditches, dells, and a compound fracture or two, and you have it translated dead as Porson,

But I said Barney was nothing but a good one. No more he is; and, like the negro wench my uncle Toby talks of, he had suffered persecution at the last five-bar gate, and had learnt mercy.

Well, we cleared the top of the hill, and, my word! if you had but seen us swinging it away like a parcel of clock pendulums, down deep into the valley below. But, stop! Do you see nothing? (What?) What stupid! just look at that country- twenty miles of level plain, with nothing but willows and ditches to stop us, and the scent rank as a rabbit-warren. Do you hear nothing? Hark to yonder

old deserted devil of a castle at the bottom of the hill; do but listen how it prattles and talks to the dogs. Echo lives thereabouts, -viewless female; she that was turned into stone for. But Barney is at his old tricks again; he has a mind to eat some of those willow saplings about a mile off. Do but hark to those dogs. A view-holloa! By heaven it's sublime! There's a splitting pace. Now, Barney, you are getting your belly full of it. The old dogs are working forward for execution. Reynard flies as if he wanted to leave his tail; he is at his last shifts. Ringwood, Chaunter, and Fury, have pitched their pipes up at the very top of their gamut, and the rest come screaming up like wild things. Juggler is in upon him what a growl with a yell at the back of it ! Reynard battles it out most bravely. There's a pretty game at snapdragon for you. What a mixture! dogs, horses, whips, Reynard, and Old Aaron all down in the ditch together. Dead, dead, dead! To be sure he is so shall we all be; and he fell in the field like a hero.

Now the stragglers are coming crawling in, and the whips are at work like paddles in a steam-boat. Old Aaron is standing up in the stirrups, with his hat in one hand and Reynard in the other, chaunting his requiem. There are lungs for you at sixty years old! sound as bell-metal, and loud enough to startle a statue. Well done, good horse, Barney, where are we now? Fifteen miles from home, with a run of twenty, Time-half-past twelve.

Home we go, four of us, to my Caza. Barney trips it like a lark all the way, and toddles into stall, tossing his head and champing the bit. Jim has 'em all in clothes in ten minutes; and at four we foot it under the mahogany with a loin of roast veal before us, sister Fanny (laughing lass!) in the chair; three bottles of the real

none of your bee's-wing, but black crust, hard and dry, halfinch thick up to the muzzle— with a pretty pair of whites, just for contrast; and, adieu to me and BARNEY.