wonder what Roffey says on the matter, in his gossips in the Elysian Fields....

In dealing with our present theme, the Home Country, it will be convenient, however, only to speak of such portions of it as have survived the decline and fall of metropolitan hunting, and confine ourselves to such remaining parts as are still negotiable for those whose taste or necessities compel them to take their woodcraft in the vicinity of London. These I shall treat of in the refaciamento style: relating the experience I have had of them, whereby their general characteristics may be gleaned, and adding so much of their existing positions as may be needful for present information and cindance.

The Hertfordshire country is quite as accessible as any, from the capital, and has many claims to a fair sporting character. It is neither a second Quorn nor another Pytchley, but a sportsman will find it offer him materials for good working runs, if no flying bursts reward his visit. My chief knowledge of it was acquired towards the close of Mr. Delmè Radcliffe's career as master, when I was the guest of that gentleman's very liberal hospitality, and his debtor for much courtesy and kindness. In his day the kennels were at a place called Kensworth-green, about a couple of miles on what used to be the Birmingham road side of Luton. They consisted of a range of buildings of little architectural pretension, but replete with convenience and comfort, having room for a couple of full packs of hounds, stabling for some twenty hunters and hacks, and a very complete little huntsman's box, with a sanctum for the master on occasion. That all was conducted there secundum artem, will be concluded by those who are aware that Mr. Delmè Radcliffe is the author of "The Noble Science," one of the most practical and clever works extant on the modern chase. Beckford wrote a good manual for hunting as it was then, but it relates to a slower amusement than the fox-hunting of these days. The nature of the country may be gathered in this allusion to it in "The Noble Science :"-" To proceed to our consideration of the kind of hound fit for it, I need not say that good shoulders are indispensable to one fit for any; but, beyond all other points in shape and make, I would especially direct the attention of any one hunting Herts, to feet. Though perhaps few-very few, if any of the provincial countries (and by provincial I mean all which are not principally devoted to grazing and pasture lands) can boast of greater variety than our country, considering that, in the hedge-greens of Goddesden and Flamsted-indeed, in the whole county to the west of Redbourn-a fox seldom quits grass, and that further below, beyond the stiff clays of Bramingham and Sundon, we have the fine grass vale of Toddington, equalling the best parts of the best countries, and formerly characterised by Mr. Meynel himself as the 'Elysian fields,' still I have said that a great variety exists; and as in all give-and-take' with the good will come the bad, so around Kimpton and a great part of the country between the Welvyn and Harpenden roads, and occasionally in other parts, fields are to be found bestrewed with flints as thick as 'leaves in Vallambrosa,' very nearly equalling those in Hampshire." Now here is an accidental epitome of the sort of country the visitor to the Hertfordshire may calculate on-a picture that don't improve with age. Every season the face of our island assumes new wrinkles, in a hunt

ing sense as well as a social-railroads are seaming it like the smallpox. How they are off for "game" with the Hertfordshire just now, cannot speak from personal knowledge; they tell me, very well. In Mr. Radcliffe's time it was awfully expensive work: the keepers were paid the Lord knows how much for every fox that was found, which of course was nuts for the varmint, who were pretty sure of an open earth or drain in some quiet nook or other....... The best fixtures of the Hertfordshire hounds are for the most part within easy distance of some station of the North-western Railway-the more's the pity.

More afield, but still in the county of Herts, are the Puckeridge hounds-a right good sporting establishment as now conducted, if a little below the high flavour of its neighbour. It is also under the average of the Hertfordshire country considerably, though it is fair riding, and quite good enough for your "rough and ready" people; and, contrasted with a metropolitan district, of which we shall presently have to speak-Surrey, with its bottomless pits of filth for valleys, and the stone hatchets of its hills-it is Paradise to Purgatory. Gentlemen in difficulties for a day's or week's sport, to whom these presents are addressed, won't care a farthing to be told all about the economy of the Puckeridge-their breed, seed, and generation-neither where the money comes from that keeps them going, nor whither it departs when it is gone. At their head is a thorough sportsman, whether in the field or in the kennel; and those who don't take me on my word will do well. Let them see Mr. Parry in either capacity, and they will be the better for it all the rest of their foxhunting life. There has been a considerable fluctuation among the masters of these hounds since the reign of the great Mr. Hanbury, who was at their head for thirty years. He was succeeded by Lord Petre, a nobleman whose name stands on the most honourable roll of our annals of the chase. His lordship followed Mr. Hanbury in 1831, and continued to hunt the Puckeridge country till 1835, when it fell into the hands of the quondam master of the Forfarshire. It is strictly one of the metropolitan hunting countries, and as such I introduce it here; but it is scarce a locality into which I should counsel the mere pleasure-seeker to follow me. In a rural relation, it is worthy of all praise and support. The farmers are almost all of a right sporting stamp, fond of the fun themselves, and giving all leave and licence to others to do as it seemeth fit to them. I never saw more reckless riding over the tender Ceres than with the Puckeridge, nor so little manifestation on the part of the (supposed) sufferers. But the fields are small, the fences by no means fancy leaps, and the galloping, as a rule, very distressing for horses used to more flattering countries. You have, moreover, a pack, and a man at the head of it, intent on business; and unless you are with them at first, you had better turn your horse's head homewards at once. I had a bad start indeed with the Puckeridge, having commenced with them in Mr. Dalzell's time, who for many seasons had a run of ill-luck. He hadn't the knack of conciliating the natives, and so they bullied his foxes, and he went to loggerheads with them,

"And quite athwart

Went all decorum."

My opinion of him in his new capacity in the south was thus expressed at the time:

"As a master of hounds Mr. Dalzell unites two qualities so rarely found to exist in the same individual: he is a first-rate rider, endowed with the most invincible patience; no octogenarian ever crawled over a greasy fallow after the jolly dogs with more untiring endurance than he sticks to the last expiring particle of scent that may bring him to his fox. Of all the slavery on earth, none equals that to which a gentleman-hnntsman immolates himself-no man alive will do it (that is will persevere in it) unless he be a thorough sportsman. When Mr. Dalzell emigrated five hundred miles into a foreign land, he did not leave his home ignorant of the difficulties he had to meet, or without confidence in the energies he possessed to combat and conquer them. Short as my experience has been, I can feel that his choice has not fallen in a land flowing with milk and honey. I am not to be understood as meaning any want of courtesy to the members of the Puckeridge Hunt; but there are asperities which it would be better for all parties were permitted to soften and decay. The oligarchy of his part of Herts is peculiar: it is in the renters of the soil. I cannot suppose that it is desired to have this portion of the country purely a farmer's hunt, I believe the few extensive farmers who hold the whole, or the greatest part of it, have too much good sense to promote or countenance such a policy. To these, in conclusion, I would more directly apply myself. I am a stranger it is true; but how much more of the game does he see who looks on, than they who hold the cards? Lend no ear to the idle gossip that jealousy engenders, and common report magnifies and fosters. Give the gentleman who has come among you a fair trial; and, admitting no hearsay evidence, be yourselves his jury. The motive and object of his coming entitle him to your consideration and support; I am much deceived if the result of it will not ensure him your esteem and friendship. Heaven knows, his is no sinecure who labours to please any community, however circumscribed may be its circle-Tot rami quot arbores. Look with compassion upon a fellow-creature who has to deal with the bile of half a county. Leave local bickerings and party feuds for petty sessions and vestry meetings; but come to covert side in peace and good-will towards all men. I mean not to exempt one, aspiring to conduct a fox-hunting establishment, from the penalty which attaches to ambition of every description; still, in venturing to plead for a gallant and well deserving sportsman, who for your amusement has undertaken an arduous and expensive office, I leave his case in your hands, with this counsel

"Blame where you must be candid where you can-
But be each critic a good-natured man.'''

Nobody will deny the claim of Surrey to metropolitan connexion, any more than that the Surrey side is not the most aristocratic "side' of the capital. Nimrod visited it, or rather the Surrey hounds, in 1823, when they had been a long while under the direction of Mr. Haigh, a gentleman who was at their head on my first essay with them in 1835. As I have already said, like "the human face divine," time don't improve the face of a country so far as relates to hunting. Now my friend Apperley found riding over it, in his time, anything but being upon velvet, as his opinion thus recorded goes to show. 66 Except Sussex, I never saw, heard of, or was in, a rougher country than Surrey; not a ride is but through the coverts, and the

lanes surrounding them are belly deep in many places. Notwithstanding this, runs are sometimes had in these parts." With this opinion I cordially accord: Surrey is a miraculous place for mud; but I never had an idea of what sort of thing a ride in a scavenger's cart was, till I had a taste of West Sussex. Nimrod calls it an "ungentlemanlike country:" he need not have been quite so nice in his vocabulary. About the period of my first visit to Mr. Haigh and the Surrey, the establishment, by the indignation of Diana, had been selected as the piece de resistance of all the caricaturists in the sporting world: to say nothing of its being the bull's-eye for all the invective ever launched against any contrivance in woodcraft. Thither then, as I went, I couldn't help thinking of the blessing said to be in store for those that expect nothing. I think the place of meeting was Godstone Green, a pretty rural spot; but the mise en scene of the tableau did not please me. The huntsinan, Tom Hill, was not a graceful figure; and the first whip was a "wopper," and no mistake. These big fellows rode (of course) big horses, in racing snaffles, with reins not thicker than pack-thread, which had the oddest effect possible. Mr. Haigh, the master, was at the time in his seventy-ninth year, riding only eight stone-and somehow the whole thing was as it were reversed; to be in keeping, the master ought to have changed places with the man. But the "character"of the affair did not end there: in my notes of that morning's details I find it thus written:

"Mr. Haigh rode an extraordinary, powerful, strapping, bay horse, fit to carry him had he been four times as weighty as he was-and here all the murder about the snaffles was out-this great animal having only an etherial bit between his jaws. That veteran sportsman it seems has two hobbies--and where is the man who has less?a great leaning towards visionary snaffles, and the most unmitigated abhorrence of tobacco. King James himself had not a more rooted antipathy to the 'infernal mandungus.' He expresses his conviction that the puff of a cigar is fatal to scent, and he takes no roundabout method of delivering that opinion to any of the uninitiated that he finds at a cover side with a weed in his face. During the day a man got into trouble at a fence, when the old gentleman rubbed his hands with great glee, and seemed transported with satisfaction. I inquired the reason of my next neighbour, at the moment; who replied, "Oh! he caught that man smoking with the hounds last year, and he'll never forgive him to the hour of his death!" "

My reminiscences of the Old Surrey continue in this wise-I was surprised at the gloss these hounds contrived to carry, considering the mud-berths they live half the winter in; and their hill country is out of the frying-pan into the fire, for such a school of spontaneous anatomy, I defy the whole earth to produce. Mr. Haigh told me he had just lost a valuable mare from a wound of a flint in the pastern, which made it necessary to destroy her on the spot. I don't set this down as a matter of record for its singularity, my wonder being how the devil horses ridden over these downs have a leg at all left at Christmas. .. A leash of foxes had been viewed away from Chicken Wood; for Valentine's-day being just passed, the genial influences had drawn them towards their leafy cover. One had been seen to cross the hills for a coppice behind the mill; on the drag of this Giovani we hit, but it was as cold as a dead man's nose, so we once more launched into a woody