Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 372, October 1846

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: A few obvious misprints have been corrected, but in general the originally erratic spelling, punctuation and typesetting conventions have been retained. Accents in foreign language poetry are inconsistent in the original, and have not been standardized. Hyphenated or nonhyphenated and accented or unaccented versions of same words retained as in original when occurring evenly, or consistently by individual author or speaker. Otherwise changed to most frequent use.

This year we have been a defaulter on the Moors. Not that our eye has become more dim, our aim less sure, or our understanding weaker than of yore; but we are no longer subject to the same keen and burning impulses which used periodically to beset us towards the beginning of our departed Augusts, inflaming our destructive organs, and driving us to the heather, as the stag is said to be driven by instinct to the shores of the sea. Somehow or other, we now take things much more coolly. We no longer haunt the shop of Dickson—that most excellent and unassuming of gunmakers—for weeks before the shooting-season, discussing the comparative excellences of cartridge and plain shot, or refitting our battered apparatus with the last ingenuities of Sykes. Our talk is not of pointers or of setters; neither do we think it incumbent upon us to perambulate Princes Street in a shooting-jacket, or with the dissonance of hobnailed shoes. We can even look upon the northern steamers, surcharged with all manner of ammunition, crammed from stem to stern with Cockney tourists and sportsmen, carriages and cars, hampers, havresacks, and hair trunks, steering their way from our noble frith towards the Highlands, without the slightest wish to become one of that gay and gallant crew. Incredible as it may appear, we actually wrote an article upon the twelfth of August last; nor was the calm, even tenor of our thoughts for a moment interrupted by the imaginary whirr of the gor-cock. For the life of us, we cannot recollect what sort of a day it was. To be sure, we were early up and at work—that is, as early as we ever are, somewhere about ten: we wrote on steadily until dinner-time, with no more intermission than was necessary for the discussion of a couple of glasses of Madeira. After a slight and salubrious meal, we again tackled to the foolscap, and by nine o'clock dismissed the printer's devil to his den with a quarter of a ream of manuscript. We then strolled up to our club, where, for the first time, we were reminded of the nature of the anniversary, by the savour of roasted grouse. So, with a kind of melancholy sigh for the impairment of our blunted energies, we sat down to supper, and leisurely explored the pungent pepper about the backbone of the bird of the mountain.